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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 


PRINCETON, N. J. 


———— 


PURCHASED BY THE 
MrRs. ROBERT LENCX KENNEDY CHURCH HISTORY FUND. 


BRevSoa CAGRLIZ6 


Church historians 


} ‘Dees ( 


PAE Nol Nai 


vie 














, f 
jf 


CHURCH HISTORIANS 


including papers on 


Eusesius : Orosius: ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 
OrpeEricus VITALIS - Las Casas - BARONIUS 
BoLLANpus - MuratTori - MoEHLER 
LINGARD - HERGENROETHER - JANSSEN 
: F PR 
DENIFLE - Lupwic von Pastor <a Meer 









WITH FOREWORD AND INDEX BY NOV 17 1926. 
PETER GUILDAY, Pu.D. Leo oop mS 








NED &.S 
BLISHED 1 














NEW YORK 
P. J. KENEDY & SONS 
Publishers to the Holy Apostolic See 
1926 


mibil Dbstat; 
Artuur J. Scanian, S.T.D. 


Censor Librorum 


Imprimatur: 
EK Patrick CarpINAL Hayes 
Archbishop, New York 


New York, fune 24, 1926 


COPYRIGHT, 1926 
BY P. J. KENEDY & SONS 


Printed in the United States of America 


FOREWORD 


OUNDED at Cleveland on December thirtieth, 
1919, the American Catholic Historical As- 
sociation has as its object the promotion of 

study and research in the domain of ecclesiastical 
history. 

Annual meetings of the Association have been 
held at Washington, D.C. (1920), St. Louis (1921), 
New Haven (1922), Columbus (1923), Philadelphia 
(1924), and Ann Arbor (1925). Over eighty papers 
on special topics in the general field of Church His- 
tory have been read at these meetings, and many 
of these carefully prepared essays have been pub- 
lished in the official organ of the Association, the 
Catholic Historical Review. 

The success of the new historical movement thus 
inaugurated among American Catholic scholars war- 
ranted a further development in the plans of the As- 
sociation: namely, that of presenting at each annual 
meeting the result of the past year’s study on a 
composite subject. Accordingly, the programme of 
the Ann Arbor meeting (December twenty-ninth to 
thirty-first, 1925) was so arranged that the papers 
formed a series of critical biographies of eminent 
Catholic historians from Eusebius in the fourth 
century to Ludwig von Pastor, who is still living. 

Fourteen of these papers make up the contents of 


ili 


iv. FOREWORD 


the present volume, to which the title Church His- 
torians has been given. 

Any attempt to compress the vast scope of ec- 
clesiastical historiography into the compass of one 
volume would be a rash undertaking. In his Hizs- 
toriographia Ecclesiastica which the late Bishop 
Stang compiled in 1897 for his students at Louvain, 
five hundred and fifteen Church historians are listed, 
beginning with the Evangelists and ending with the 
illustrious Jungmann, who had passed away in 1895, 
after laying the foundations of sound critical his- 
torical scholarship in the great Belgian University. 

Since the time at the disposal of the annual meet- 
ing is necessarily limited, it was impossible to bur- 
den the programme of 1925 with a series of papers 
representative of all the various phases of ecclesi- 
astical historiography. Hence, a choice had to be 
made; not, indeed, a narrowed choice, but one that 
might fairly display the history of history-writing 
in the Church during the past twenty centuries. It 
is the intention of the Association to return from 
time to time to this fascinating subject and to pre- 
sent at future meetings other groups of critical biog- 
raphies of Church historians. 

We may congratulate those who have contributed 
to this initial symposium; for, as the years pass, it 
will be followed by other volumes containing the 
most recent scholarship in a science that has the 
loyal defense of historical truth as its chief aim and 
purpose. 

It is no reproach to Catholic scholarship in the 


FOREWORD V 


United States that neither Gooch in his History and 
Historians of the Nineteenth Century (1922) nor 
Fueter in his Geschichte den neuern Historiographie 
(1914) has listed a single American name among 
those who have forwarded the general study of 
Catholic Church history. The organized hierarchi- 
cal life of the Church in the United States is not 
yet a century and a half old. The numerical growth 
alone of the Church—from 25,000 in 1785 to al- 
most twenty millions at the present day — reveals 
the untold demands made upon its bishops, priests, 
religious Orders and Sisterhoods for the constant 
and watchful spiritual care of such a vast body 
of the faithful. The development of the Church in 
America has of necessity been almost exclusively in 
its external side. It has marched side-by-side with 
the growth of the nation; and all individual energies 
to a greater or less degree have been drawn upon 
to assist in this growth. Even now with thoroughly 
organized dioceses and parishes, and with an in- 
creased centralization in Catholic education and 
social welfare work, years must pass before that 
freedom from the multitude of missionary duties 
which still crowd the lives of our priests and bishops 
can be assured to those whose talents and training 
fit them for the absorbing themes of higher learning. 

Meanwhile, the American Catholic Historical As- 
sociation is meeting an outstanding problem in the 
defense of the Faith by bringing together in one 
group the Catholic students, teachers, and writers 
of Church history, upon whom the Church depends 


vl FOREWORD 


for legitimate protection against the continuance of 
erroneous historical teaching. 

The Association is indebted to the fourteen writers 
whose scholarly essays comprise this first volume of 
its publications. To them and to the publishers, 
Messrs. Kenedy and Sons, of New York City, and 
to their capable staff of assistants, the Association 
expresses its gratitude and appreciation. 


PETER GUILDAY 
Catholic University of America 
February 18, 1926 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

IDG E WORD yy ciie) Vat Tashi d Ven beara Meena tM anon Ysa yt lil 
EuUsEBIUS (c. 260—c. 340) 

OVE MCLE Ari tre L.L) ie seen eae brn iad 3 
OrosIus (c. 380 —c. 420) 

Willian Moot. Gamble nMva oie ar in re 30 
St. BEDE THE VENERABLE (672-735) 

RCT RULAUCIS Mm DCLLCL On p ae miaa iyi abies 71 
ORDERICUS VITALIS (1075—c. I142) 

CENALICS AV ra Lito) omeamennM ie Taek, hve ae ic, TOO 
Las CasAs (c. 1474-1566) 

HTANGISR TO LSCHAT Tr OU cau mum ati ray vacbigl Nele 128 


BARONIUS (1538-1607) 
Very Rev. Thomas Plassmann, O.F.M., Ph.D. . 153 


BOLLANDUS (1596-1665) 


i CUreaePancls Vianna Upon: pemaiean ey) eins) iain 190 
MuRATORI (1672-1750) 

Rerkeve Thomas),). Shahan) D:D...) as 2) si. 253 
MoEHLER (1796-1838) 

CEO eter eIVLLMOT: OLY Lo Couto tar ser at alban dala tay te 240 
LINGARD (1771-1851) 

PCreNW tN PR Vane. Lil ieuieicii yb sd lets 277 
HERGENROETHER (1824-1890) 

ieee reroan GC. Fischers POD 289 
JANSSEN (1829-1891) 

ren mAlired  Iauimann;: Salen sieel.. het ieites ws ce 321 
DENIFLE (1844-1905) 

Rev. Boniface Stratemeier, O.P... 2... 2... 354 
LuDWIG von Pastor (1854————) 

Perv ep chelixe bellner, Cho Bien ac ss cee 37g 
Pa clup SUNS, aed Se PCA DU Pr et Pa Mie: ONy bb UE 417 





CHURCH HISTORIANS 





EUSEBIUS (c. 260—c. 340) 


Roy J. DEFERRARI, PH.D., PROFESSOR OF LATIN 
Catholic University of America 


Tie LIKE 


HE year of the Edict of Milan, which di- 
vides the first from the second epoch of 
church history, does like service for the 

life and for the literary medium of the Church’s first 
historian. It is 313 that by the growing assent of 
scholars marks off chronologically the Alexandrian 
from the Byzantine period of Greek literature, and 
it is 313 that cleaves into uneven but appropriate 
parts the career of Eusebius Pamphili. In training 
and in literary taste Eusebius belongs to the earlier 
time. Officially and in literary productivity he be- 
longs to the later. It was shortly after 313 that 
Eusebius became a bishop, as it was for the most 
part after 313 that his works were actually com- 
posed. Of events contemporary with these later 
years Eusebius recorded much that is valued, but 
it is for what he tells of the earlier time —of the 
days before the Peace of the Church—that he 
looms so large in the history of history and of litera- 
ture. Through him — through him almost alone — 
are preserved to us the feeble memories of an age 
that died with himself. It is this aspect of Eusebius 
that receives emphasis in this paper. 
3 


4 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Of the facts of his life we know but little. 
Neither the place nor the year of his birth are 
known. The best conjecture makes Palestine his 
native land and assigns to the period 260-264 the 
date of his birth. Palestine in Caesarea may have 
been his native city. All the known associations of 
his youth, at any rate, and the chief activities of 
his maturity are linked with her. He was certainly 
not born a Jew, but that he was born a Christian 
we do not know. His parents, whether pagan or 
Christian, were not of high rank. 

At Caesarea in Eusebius’ youth lived the learned 
priest Pamphilus. A native of Phoenicia and at one 
time a student of Alexandria, he had been ordained 
to the priesthood by Bishop Agapius of Caesarea, 
and had there established a school and library 
where the Bible was studied, and the scholarly tra- 
dition of Origen preserved. To this school came 
Eusebius as pupil, and in this library, which seems 
to have been unrivalled in Christian circles, he laid 
the foundation of his future work. A common en- 
thusiasm drew master and pupil together. They be- 
came most intimate friends, co-workers in the 
acquisition of books and in the acquisition of the 
knowledge that these books contained, united and 
inspired in both these enterprises by the deepest 
reverence for Origen. These were the formative 
years and these the master influences of Eusebius 
as we know him, and the memory of both Origen 
and Pamphilus stands out large in his works — 
Origen in the encyclopaedic sweep of Eusebius’ 


EUSEBIUS 5 


scholarly interests and Pamphilus in the very name 
which his grateful pupil assumed — EvoéBuos 6 
Ilaudtrov. 

This time of peaceful industry was at length af- 
fected by the conflict of the world outside. Pagan- 
ism was making its last stand against the Church; 
and, in the violence of the struggle, the most 
unwarlike of Christian scholars could not remain 
undisturbed. Maximinus’ persecution stretched from 
303 to 310, and in this time of the Church’s transi- 
tion from the old order to the new, the earliest of 
her historians was frequently absent from Caesarea. 
Details of his movements have not come down to 
us. Stories creditable and discreditable to him and 
equally without foundation flourished in the pov- 
erty of real evidence. We do know of his presence 
in Tyre and in the Thebais during this time, for 
he describes as an eye-witness and with deep emo- 
tion the martyrdoms that the persecution visited 
on these unhappy districts. We also know that 
Pamphilus was in prison from November 307 until 
February 310, and that Eusebius, despite the peril 
to himself, visited his master and co-worker in 
prison." 

There is no conclusive evidence that Eusebius 
himself shared in this imprisonment or that he 
escaped martyrdom by some unworthy concession 
such as offering sacrifice to pagan divinities. Some- 

1 It is to this period that the first five books of the Apology 
for Origen were written by both in common. After Pamphilus 


had suffered martyrdom in 310, Eusebius added the sixth book 
to the Apology, and wrote the biography of Pamphilus. 


6 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


time during this period Eusebius visited Egypt, ap- 
parently after the martyrdom of Pamphilus in the 
latest and fiercest days of the persecution. If Euse- 
bius suffered imprisonment at any time, it was after 
his visit to Egypt, and in that event the general 
amnesty in the spring of 310 would have effected 
his own release. 

Some years later, between 313 and 315, Eusebius 
succeeded Agapius as bishop of Caesarea, and thus 
inevitably became involved in another struggle — 
this time a theological one. In the Arian controversy 
Eusebius strove to keep to the middle of the road. 
He wrote several letters favorable to Arius; through 
his offices the religious creed of Arius was declared 
orthodox at a synod of Caesarea. On the other hand 
he asked Arius to be obedient to his bishop and 
opponent in the controversy, Alexander of Alexan- 
dria, and to seek readmission into the Alexandrian 
church. In a synod held at Antioch toward the end 
of 324, under the influence of Alexander, the creed 
of Arius was condemned, and Eusebius, on his re- 
fusal to subscribe, was excommunicated. In the next 
year at Nicea he was reinstated, however, and sub- 
scribed to the creed formulated by that Council, 
though unrepresentative in this of the baptismal 
creed of his people. In the story of the struggle 
that followed the Council, the name of Eusebius 
occasionally appears. He had a hand in the removal 
of the bishop Eustathius from Antioch (probably 
in 330) and in the excommunication of Athanasius 
of Alexandria ten years after Nicaea. Against Mar- 


EUSEBIUS i 


cellus of Ancyra, deposed in 336, he wrote two 
polemics. | 

At Nicaea apparently began that friendship be- 
tween Eusebius and Constantine which endured, it 
seems, until the emperor’s death. On the twentieth 
and thirtieth anniversaries of Constantine’s assum- 
ing the purple, Eusebius was the orator of the day, 
and when Constantine died in 337, Eusebius wrote 
a panegyric in his memory: On the Life of the 
Blessed Emperor Constantine (Kis tov Biov tod 
makapiov Kovoraytivov Bactdéws ). A short time 
after, certainly not later than 340, Eusebius himself 
was dead.” 


2. LITERARY ACTIVITY 


For our purposes the works of Eusebius divide 
as follows: A. Historical; B. Exegetical; C. A polo- 
getic; D. Doctrinal; E. Letters; F. Homilies. For 
precise grouping the foregoing or any assembly of 


2 According to a Syrian Martyrology, he died on the 30th of 
May. The appearance of his name in any martyrology, in spite 
of the taint of Arianism, is a very remarkable fact. Yet Euse- 
bius’ name has had a place in several. In the Martyrologium 
Hieronymianum for XI Kal. Jul. we read: In Caesarea Cappa- 
dociae depositio sancti Eusebii. The word ‘ Cappadociae” sug- 
gests that the person indicated here is Eusebius, the predecessor 
of St. Basil the Great. However, the fame of Palestinian Euse- 
bius overshadowed his Cappadocian namesake, and finally “ Cap- 
padociae ” disappeared from the Latin calendars. Where no dis- 
tinct reference is made to another, the historian Eusebius is 
doubtless understood in the old Latin martyrologies. Thus in 
some Gallican service books the historian is commemorated as 
a saint. For many centuries he held his place even in the Mar- 
tyrologium Romanum. When this Martyrology was revised under 
Pope Gregory XIII, his name was struck out and replaced by 
that of Eusebius of Samosata. 


8 


CHURCQCHEAITSITLORIANS 


subdivisions, for that matter, is not a satisfactory 
scheme, since some of Eusebius’ works have an 
equally clear title to inclusion under several heads; 
but it serves to suggest something of that astound- 
ing range of labours that beyond historiography 
touch every corner of theology up to his time cul- 
tivated. 


A. Historical. 


Aun BW ND 


. Lost Life of Pamphilus. 

. A collection of Ancient Martyrdoms, also lost. 
. On the Martyrs of Palestine. 

. The Chronicle. 

. The Church History. 

. The Life of Constantine. 


B. Exegetical. 


7 


Io. 


It. 
r2. 


13. 


Commissioned by the emperor to prepare fifty 
copies of the Bible for use in the churches of 
Constantinople. 


. sections and Canons. 
. Labours of Pamphilus and Eusebius in editing the 


Septuagint. 

Of (a) the Interpretation of the ethnological 
terms in the Hebrew Scriptures; (b) Chorog- 
raphy of Ancient Judea with the Inheritances 
of the Ten Tribes; (c) A plan of Jerusalem 
and the Temple; (d) On the Names of Places 
in the Holy Scriptures; only the last is extant. 

On the nomenclature of the Book of the Prophets. 

Commentary on the Psalms, missing in part. 

Commentary on Isaiah. 


14-19. Commentaries on other books of Holy Scrip- 


ture, of some of which we may have extracts. 


20: 


21. 
22. 


22. 


24: 


EUSEBIUS 9 


Commentary on St. Luke, extracts alone pre- 
served. 

Commentary on I Corinthians. Not extant. 

Commentary on Hebrews. A possible single frag- 
ment alone preserved. 

On the Discrepancies of the Gospel. An epitome 
and some extracts from the original are pre- 
served. 

General Elementary Introduction. 


C. Apologetic. 


25 
26; 
27: 
28. 


29. 
30. 
ay 

Kee 


33: 


Against Hierocles. 

Against Porphyry. Not extant. 

The Praeparatio Evangelica. 

The Demonstratio Evangelica. Of the twenty 
books, the last ten, with the exception of a 
fragment of book XV, are lost. 

The Praeparatio Ecclesiastica. Lost. 

The Demonstratio Ecclesiastica. Lost. 

Two Books of Objection and Defense. Lost. 

The Theophania or Divine Manifestation. Except 
for a few fragments of the original, extant only 
in a Syriac version. 

On the Numerous Progeny of the Ancients. Not 
extant. 


D. Dogmatic. 


34. 
35. 


36. 


37: 
38. 


The Apology for Origen. Only first book extant. 

Against Marcellus, Bishop of Ancyra. Authen- 
ticity doubted. 

On the Theology of the Church. Authenticity 
doubted. 

On the Paschal Festival. Long fragment survives. 

A treatise against the Manichaeans. Existence only 
implied by Epiphanius (Haer., LXVI, 21). 


IO CHURCH HISTORIANS 


E. Letters. 


39. To Alexander of Alexandria. 

40. To Euphrasion, or Euphration. 

41. To the Empress Constantia. 

42. To the Church of Caesarea, after the Council of 
Nicaea. 


F. Homilies. 


43. At the Dedication of the Church in Tyre. 

44. At the Vicennalia of Constantine. Not extant. 
45. On the Sepulchre of the Saviour. Not extant. 
46. At the Tricennalia of Constantine. 

47. In praise of the Martyrs. 

48. On the Failure of Rain. Lost. 


The mere recital of the above list of works is an 
impressive index to the industry of their author. 
That so much has perished occasions no surprise, 
of course, to one familiar with the posthumous for- 
tunes of other ancient authors. That so much of 
Eusebius remains is a tribute to the good sense of 
the centuries that followed his death. His own style 
—even apart from the copious and often bald ex- 
cerpts that he quotes—is monotonous and dull. 
He knew the rules of rhetoric and could apply them 
correctly, but never with that power and freshness 
which was to bring distinction to the Greek litera- 
ture of the later fourth century. And then, too, in 
the growing and sensitive orthodoxy of the ages that 
followed Nicaea and Constantinople, suggestions of 
Origen and of Arius were not titles to literary im- 
mortality. Yet Eusebius was tolerated, and his re- 
mains have thus come down to us almost, as it 


EUSEBIUS II 


were, despite themselves, largely because of their 
altogether unique service to history as the witness 
to the Ante-Nicene church. 


3. HISTORICAL WORKS 


At present we are chiefly concerned with the his- 
torical writings of Eusebius. Eusebius probably 
wrote his Chronicle before the persecution of 303. 
Its full title is Chronological Tables to Which is 
Prefixed an Epitome of Universal History Drawn 
from Various Sources (Xpovixot xavoves kal 
€miToUn TavTodamns toropias “EAAnvwv Te Kat 
BapBdpwy), as he himself tells us in the beginning 
of his Eclogae Propheticae. An introduction, now 
designated as the first book, contains short sum- 
maries of the history of the Chaldeans, based on 
Alexander Polyhistor, Abydenus, and Josephus; of 
the Assyrians, drawn from Abydenus, Castor, Dio- 
dorus, and Cephalaion; of the Hebrews, taken from 
the Old Testament, Josephus, and Clement of Alex- 
andria; of the Egyptians, based on Diodorus, Mane- 
thus, and Porphyrius; of the Greeks, taken from 
Castor, Porphyrius, and Diodorus; and of the Ro- 
mans, drawn from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Dio- 
dorus, and Castor. The more important part of the 
work is the second book, with its chronological 
tables (Xpovixol kavdves) and its epitome of uni- 
versal history (éruroun ravtodamfs toropias). 

In his Praeparatio Evangelica, X, 9, Eusebius 
accounts for the interest that Christians felt in the 


T2 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


study of comparative chronology. In substance he 
says that, if heathen opponents contrasted the an- 
tiquity of their rites with the newness of the Chris- 
tian religion, the Christian apologists could reply 
by proving that the most celebrated legislators and 
philosophers, whom they thought the font of their 
religious ideas, flourished later than the Hebrew 
legislator and the other prophets who had foretold 
the coming of Christ, and who had taught a religion 
of which the Christian was the legitimate continu- 
ance. And so Eusebius argues in this section of the 
Praeparatio Evangelica, quoting largely from pre- 
ceding writers who had proved the greater antiquity 
of the Jews, namely, Josephus, Tatian, Clement of 
Alexandria, and especially Africanus. Africanus had 
already discovered synchronisms between sacred 
and profane history, and had published the chrono- 
logical work which Eusebius used as a model and to 
a great extent for the materials of his own Chronicle. 

How Eusebius arranged the details of the strictly 
chronological part of his work can not be ascer- 
tained, since the translations, which are alone pre- 
served, are not made from the original but from a 
revision which came out shortly after the death of 
Eusebius. In the chronological tables, the years of 
Abraham are numbered with years of the reigns 
of kings, and sometimes those of other periods are 
combined with them synchronously in parallel col- 
umns. With these columns, varying in number 
through the centuries until we have only the years 
of the emperors parallel with the Olympiads and 


EUSEBIUS 13 


the years of Abraham, are incorporated important 
dates taken from Jewish and profane history. 

As we have said above, Eusebius is dependent 
here largely upon Africanus. We are not justified, 
however, in assuming as Scaliger did that Eusebius 
copied Africanus slavishly in every place where he 
did not express himself as in utter disagreement 
with him. There are convincing indications to show 
that Eusebius views his material much more criti- 
cally. He avoids that division into world eras which 
is connected with the millennium theory, and he does 
not begin with the creation of the world but with 
the first year of Abraham (2016/5 B.c.). That Euse- 
bius is fully aware of the difficulties of his task we 
see at the very beginning of his work. He tells us 
that we must not expect minute accuracy from such 
an investigation as he is about to enter upon. He 
says that our Lord’s words, ‘‘ It is not for you to 
know the times and the seasons,” are applicable not 
only to the end of the world, but also to the knowl- 
edge of all times and seasons. In the case of the 
Greeks, he presents the difficulties that arise from 
the comparatively recent beginning of their civili- 
zation and quotes the well-known story in Plato’s 
Timaeus, that the Greeks were but children. As for 
the Egyptians and the Chaldaeans, difficulties arise 
from the fables of which their early history is full. 
And even Hebrew chronology is not free from diffi- 
culties of its own. The solutions for these problems 
represent what he considers as sound judgment on 
the part of his forerunners, and sometimes his own 


I4 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


independent consideration. It was much easier for 
Eusebius to maintain historical accuracy in the 
early periods of his Chronicle, where he could fol- 
low trustworthy historians, than in the later periods 
after these reliable sources had come to an end, and 
he had to make a way for himself, as best he could. 
In the latter case, Eusebius only excerpted later 
authors, and, regardless of the efficiency of this 
procedure for the establishment of a chronology, 
by his care and good judgment rescued much valu- 
able historical material from destruction. 

Eusebius’ second great Historical work is the ten 
books of Ecclesiastical History (’Exx\novacrixy 
ioropia), an expansion of the last part of the 
Chronicle. As in the case of the Chronicle, the 
Ecclesiastical History possesses no continuous his- 
torical narrative, but its whole subject matter is 
inserted, as it were, into a chronological frame-work. 

The popular translation of the title (ExxAnovac- 
Tun totopia) aS Church History must not lead 
us to believe that it was Eusebius’ purpose to re- 
late the fortunes of the Christian Church from the 
time of our Saviour to his own times. To emulate 
profane historiography in the grand style could not 
enter the mind of a Christian at this period, for 
such a procedure would savour too much of the 
spirit of the profane, and would not befit a record 
of the Church of God. ‘Iazvopia is used here by 
Eusebius in its most general sense, to be compared 
in a way with the titles [lavrodamy or Ilovxidn 
ioropia, and Porphyry’s @.Adcodos icaropia. It 


EUSEBIUS 15 


signifies the collection of material handed down, as 
Eusebius also calls the collected subject matter of 
the most varied character in the Praeparatio Evan- 
gelica and Demonstratio Evangelica ioropia (CE. 
Praep. ev., 1, 6, 7). The fact that Eusebius in his 
Church History quotes so many excerpts directly, 
as he does also in the Praeparatio Evangelica, suits 
this kind of toropia, but not the strict forms of 
historiography which Sozomenus strives to follow. 
It is also in keeping with the author’s undefined and 
free interpretation of ioropta, when in his pro- 
emium he describes the frame work into which he 
intends to place his material. 

The work gives no indication that it was written 
at the suggestion of anyone else. If Constantine had 
prompted Eusebius to the task, Eusebius would 
hardly have passed over this fact in silence, for else- 
where in his writings he seems only too glad to 
parade the flatteries of his imperial patron. In the 
preface his own words suggest simply what we have 
stated above, that it grew out of his previous work, 
the Chronicle. He speaks of it as an expansion of 
the narrative which he had given in epitome in that 
work. Thus in the opening words, he sums up its 
contents as follows, placing the chronological ele- 
ment in the forefront: ‘“ The successions of the holy 
apostles together with the times which have been 
accomplished from the days of our Saviour to our 
own age.” 

After his introduction, Eusebius proposes to take 
up the following topics: 


16 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


1. The succession of bishops in the most important 
sees. 

2. Christian teachers and writers. 

3. Heretics. 

4. The punishments which came upon the Jewish 
people on account of their execution of Jesus. 

5. The persecutions of the Christians. 

6. The martyrs and the deliverance wrought by the 
Saviour in the author’s own day. 


Eusebius is dependent upon ancient models for 
the plan of his work. The détadoxat of the bishops 
correspond to the évadoxai of the schools of phi- 
losophy. Christian teachers and heretics are treated 
from a literary historical view point, their chronol- 
ogy being fixed, together with a list of their works, 
according to the manner of Alexandrian scholarship. 
In a similar spirit are added long verbatim citations 
by way of documentary evidence. As for events 
over and above such as have been mentioned above, 
only the judgment on the Jews, the Christian per- 
secutions, and the final victory of Christianity are 
treated. All the material is approached from the 
point of view that the history of the Church is at 
the same time its vindication, and proves it to be 
a divine institution. , 

The Ecclesiastical History as we know it to- 
day is not in its original form. Many events of im- 
portance occurred in such rapid succession after 
the year 311 that Eusebius was obliged several 
times to alter and amplify the end of his work. 
E. Schwartz, partly from indications in the text, 
and partly from manuscript evidence, has con- 


EUSEBIUS | 7 


cluded that there were four editions, portions of 
which he has attempted to reconstruct. In his last 
edition, Eusebius brought the narrative down to 323, 
the year in which Constantine became sole Emperor. 

The Ecclesiastical History is chiefly responsible 
for perpetuating the name of Eusebius. It was re- 
ceived with enthusiasm on its first appearance. The 
Six or seven ancient manuscripts (ninth to eleventh 
centuries) show an intercrossing of variants which 
could hardly have taken place except in a rich and 
ramified tradition of an early date. The work must 
have been copied frequently even in the first cen- 
turies after its publication. The history of the an- 
cient church, of which we would know very little 
indeed without this work, lived on in the memory 
of men as pictured by Eusebius, and almost all 
later descriptions are closely allied to his, or are 
even direct imitations. This holds true alike for the 
Greek East and the West where the translation by 
Rufinus had a wide circulation. 

Eusebius’ less important works of historiography 
may be passed over more briefly. 

A collection of the ancient acts of the martyrs 
(Luvaywy} Tav apxatwy paptupiwy) was a pre- 
liminary exercise to the writing of the Ecclesiasti- 
cal History. Although this work is now lost, most of 
its material, at least in an abridged form, was in- 
cluded in the Ecclesiastical History. 

A work on the martyrs of Palestine (Ilepi rav 
év IlaX\avorivn paptupyoavrwy), which describes 
the martyrdoms in Palestine during the persecution 


18 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of Diocletian, has survived in two recensions. The 
shorter recension is always edited with the Eccle- 
siastical History, and is found in several manu- 
scripts of that work, placed after the eighth or tenth 
books. The longer recension is preserved in its en- 
tirety only in a Syriac translation. Certain portions, 
however, are extant also in Greek. 

Eusebius in his Martyrs of Palestine speaks 
as follows about the lost biography of Pamphilus 
(IIept tod Biov Ilayudtdov): “ The rest of the tri- 
umphs of his virtue, requiring a longer narration, 
we have already before this given to the world in a 
Separate work in three books, of which his life is 
the subject.” He refers to it again three times in 
his Ecclesiastical History (VI, 32; VII, 32; VIII, 
13). St. Jerome likewise refers to it several times 
(29.1340 0)1, p. 154) fi ares is, Gee 
Q), in one case (the last) describing it as containing 
“tres libros elegantissimos,” and giving a short 
extract from the third book, the only surviving 
fragment. From the standpoint of literary history, 
the loss of this biography is particularly serious. 
We could scarcely apply the term “ elegantissimos ”’ 
to the surviving works of Eusebius, and we have 
enough respect for St. Jerome’s literary taste to be- 
lieve that he could not have used the superlative 
without some reason. In this work, Eusebius’ main 
and probably only source was his personal knowl- 
edge of Pamphilus. This circumstance together with 
Eusebius’ intense admiration for his friend must 
have cooperated in causing Eusebius to employ his 


EUSEBIUS 19 


very best style. Any consideration of outside sources 
could not have interfered with his development of 
the theme. 

The Life of Constantine (Kis rov Biov Tod paka- 
plov Kwvoravtivov Baotdéws) in four books should 
not strictly be placed among the historical works. 
It is rather an encomium in panegyrical style, re-’ 
stricted in particular to the pious deeds of the Em- 
peror (ta mpos tov OeomitdAH auvteivovta Blov ). 
The literary character of the work would stand out 
more clearly if its original draught were still pre- 
served. But as G. Pasquali has shown, the original 
form of the work was considerably enlarged by 
additions, above all, through the incorporation of 
documents. Thus only with such modifications has 
the work been handed down to us. Regarding the 
authenticity of the documents contained in this 
eulogy (e.g. edicts and letters of the Emperor), 
which were questioned by Crivelucci and others, 
there can be no doubt. Their genuine character has 
been ably defended, especially by I. A. Heikel. 
Eusebius saw in the Emperor Constantine a new 
Moses, destined by God to lead the people of God 
from oppression into freedom. He heralds the Em- 
peror as the powerful promoter and protector of 
the Church. In the spirit of the rhetorical panegyric, 
Eusebius describes Constantine’s acts, giving them 
a one-sided coloring, and omitting whatever does 
not fit in with the account as planned. However, 
we must not forget that Eusebius in this work did 
not intend to write history, and, moreover, truly 


20 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


believed the historical significance of the Emperor 
to be exactly as he described it. Accordingly we 
can not accept in this panegyric that complete con- 
demnation of Eusebius which J. Burckhardt gives 
us when he calls him “the most contrary of all 
writers of the panegyric,” “the first thoroughly un- 
truthful historian of antiquity.” 

As supplements to the encomium on Constantine, 
Eusebius wrote three works: A speech of the Em- 
peror to the assembly of the saints (Adxos dv Eypave 
TS TOV aYiwy GvANOXw ), the speech delivered by 
Eusebius on the occasion of the thirtieth anniver- 
sary of the Emperor’s reign (rpaxovraernpixés ), 
and a discourse ( Bacvdtxéds ) delivered to the Em- 
peror regarding the dedication of the Church of 
the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Eusebius himself 
speaks of these works in his Vita Constantint, IV, 
32, 46. 

The authenticity of the Emperor’s speech to the 
assembly of the saints is seriously questioned. 
Heikel seems to have proved that in its present 
form it cannot be a direct translation from the 
Latin. On the other hand, an evident dependence 
on Lactantius and the employment of verses from 
Vergil’s fourth eclogue make a Latin source quite 
probable, and this source may be the actual, authen- 
tic speech of the Emperor himself. 

Two other works, the Tptaxovraernpixds and 
the Baowdixds, which up to the present have al- 
ways appeared in the editions as one work, are often 
cited as the Laus Constantini. P. Wendland was the 


EUSEBIUS 2I 


first to discover that chapters I to X of the Laus 
Constantini form the speech of Tvicennalia, and 
chapters XI to XVIII compose the discourse de- 
livered on the occasion of the HEUne seh of the 
Church of the Holy Sepulchre. 

The oration of the Tricennalia was delivered be- 
fore the Emperor in the palace at Constantinople. 
It celebrates in powerful, though somewhat bom- 
bastic language, Constantine’s reign of thirty years 
and especially his services to the Church. The 
Baotdrkds on the other hand is not an oration at 
all, but a treatise which aims to defend the Emperor 
for erecting the magnificent church buildings in 
Jerusalem by setting forth the divinity of the 
Logos. An apologetic air prevails throughout. In 
fact the work consists almost entirely of extracts 
from his Theo phany, whose elaborate scientific argu- 
ments appear here in concise popular form. 


4. EUSEBIUS AS AN HISTORIAN 


Eusebius was primarily a scholar, a philologian 
in the broad sense of the term. His industry and 
care in the collection and employment of documen- 
tary material, and his eminent skill in the disposi- 
tion of great quantities of subject matter, make 
him one of the greatest Christian scholars, and 
make his works the most valuable and far-reaching 
in their influence upon early Christian literature. 
Few writers have ever shown as keen an insight in 
the selection of subjects which would have a last- 


22 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


ing interest for later generations. As we noted in 
the beginning of this paper, Eusebius lived in the 
period of transition between two great epochs which 
were separated from each other by such marked dif- 
ferences as appear only at intervals of many cen- 
turies. It remained for Eusebius to appreciate 
the greatness of the crisis. He alone seized the 
opportunity, and preserved the past in all its 
phases — history, doctrine, criticism and even to- 
pography — for the instruction of later generations. 
In this lies his chief claim to greatness. 

In the presentation of his facts, as a stylist, or as 
a deep and original thinker, it would be absurd to 
compare Eusebius with the great masters of classi- 
cal antiquity. Eusebius probably did not strive to 
obtain stylistic excellence, although he always shows 
himself under the influence of rhetoric. His style is 
often monotonous and tires the reader with its 
endless periods, and when it attempts to rise to 
rhetorical pathos, it passes proper bounds and be- 
comes overburdened and bombastic. He was rather 
the slave than the master of his vast learning. 
His ideas were lofty and great, but he was unequal 
to the task of adequately executing them. His iso- 
lated thoughts were valuable, but he could not place 
them together in a proper synthesis. He accumu- 
lated material with great diligence, but he was care- 
less and perfunctory in the use of them when accu- 
mulated. Thus in aftertime many succeeded him 
who surpassed him in their style of writing, but 
stood far below him in scientific sense and learning. 


EUSEBIUS 23 


Although his writings are of a wide and varied 
character, they all have the mark of apologetic lit- 
erature. In other words, his role as an apologist is 
not confined to his strictly apologetic works. What- 
ever subjects he may be treating, his thoughts seem 
to turn instinctively into the same mould. In deal- 
ing with the subject of chronology, one of his main 
objects is to show the superior antiquity of the 
Hebrew oracles to the wisdom of the Greeks. When 
he writes ecclesiastical history, the course of events 
presents to him a vindication of the Divine Word, 
in whom the faith of Christians centres. If his 
theme is as worldly as the encomium of a sovereign, 
he sees in the subject of his panegyric an instrument 
used by a higher power to fulfil a divine economy. 
Again, if he enters on so technical a task as divid- 
ing the Gospels into sections, his real motive is to 
supply materials for a harmony, and thus to vindi- 
cate the essential unity of the evangelical narratives 
against those who denied it. His character as an 
apologist may be traced to two sources: the period 
and circumstances in which he lived, and his own 
natural disposition. Living in the great crisis of 
transition, between the Hellenism of the past and 
the Christianity of the future, he was forced to wit- 
ness their contact, both hostile and friendly. His 
knowledge of the wisdom of the Greeks and the 
teaching of the Scriptures together with his natural 
breadth of sympathy and moderation of temper 
fitted him, far better than anyone else of the time, 
for the task of treating their conflicts and asso- 
Ciations. 


24 CHURCH -HISTORIANS 


In a similar way Eusebius brings the literary- 
historical point of view to all his works, even the 
apologetic. The literary-historical point of view is 
wholly foreign to all other opponents of paganism 
and heresy. They wish only to enter upon polemical 
discussion, and if they bring forward chronological 
facts occasionally these facts only serve the purpose 
of showing their chronological inferiority. The work 
of Eusebius emanated from the treasures of the 
Christian libraries of Caesarea and Oelia, just as 
profane literary-historical research also stood in 
closest connection with the works of librarians. 
Eusebius was the first to grasp clearly the concept 
of a Christian literature, and to employ with it the 
ancient methods, fixing the dates of writers and 
cataloguing their works. He transplanted the tradi- 
tion of Alexandrian philology to Christian soil. 


5. EUSEBIUS’ REPUTATION IN LATER YEARS 


Eusebius’ reputation after his death was varied. 
In the Greek Church, as long as the Arian contro- 
versy was still fresh, the tendency was to depreciate 
him as an orthodox father. But in proportion as the 
theological disputes died out, a disposition grew up 
to clear him of any taint of Arian doctrine. Socrates 
(H. E., II, 21) goes to great length to prove Euse- 
bius orthodox, quoting passages to substantiate his 
orthodoxy. Gelasius of Cyzicus is quite enthusiastic 
in his defense of Eusebius. He calls him ‘“ most 
noble tiller of ecclesiastical husbandry,” and “ strict 


EUSEBIUS 25 


lover of truth,” and says that, if there is the faint- 
est suggestion of Arianism in Eusebius’ writings, it 
is due to his simplicity, as Eusebius himself pleaded 
in his self-defense. The Second Council of Nicaea, or 
more exactly the Iconoclastic controversy, marked 
a decided change in this attitude. Since the Icono- 
clasts quoted Eusebius in support of their views, 
the opposite party did their best to disparage him, 
for if they could prove conclusively that Eusebius 
was an Arian, the claims of the Iconoclasts would 
have little foundation. This attitude toward Euse- 
bius found expression in Photius. In fact Eusebius’ 
reputation never fully recovered from the injury it 
suffered by being involved in the Iconoclastic con- 
troversy. 

In the West, Eusebius had a better fate; St. 
Jerome being the only person of prominence to hold 
a marked antipathy for him. “The chief of the 
Arians,” ‘the standard bearer of the Arian fac- 
tion,” “the most flagrant champion of the impiety 
of Arians,” are some of the choice phrases hurled 
at him by the fiery Jerome. However, the great 
service which Eusebius had done for Christian lit- 
erature prevailed with the Westerners over the at- 
tacks of St. Jerome. The two popes, Gelasius and 
Pelagius II, successively shielded the reputation of 
Eusebius, the one by refusing to place the Eccle- 
stastical History and the Chronicle on the Index, 
and the other by expressing several noble sentiments 
in his defense. The offense of Eusebius, however, 
which in the minds of these two popes did require 


26 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


an apology was his defence of the heretic Origen. 
Neither Gelasius nor Pelagius once refers directly to 
the charge of Arianism. Another Latin writer, anon- 
ymous, of a later period, calls Eusebius “the key 
of the Scriptures and the guardian of the New Tes- 
tament.” Finally, the remarkable fact of the ap- 
pearance of Eusebius’, name in martyrologies of 
both the East and West, in spite of the suspicions 
of heresy which hovered about his name, has al- 
ready been considered. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


All the works listed in this section contain bibliogra- 
phies giving full information regarding editions, complete 
and partial, as well as translations of the writings of 
Eusebius. Editions and translations will, accordingly, not 
be included in the present bibliography. 


BARDENHEWER, O., Eusebius von Casarea, in Geschichte 
der altchristlichen Litteratur. Vol. III, 240-262, 
Miinchen, ro12. 

CHRIST, WILHELM VON, Eusebius, in Griechische Littera- 
tur Geschichte. Munchen, 1913. 

FAULHABER, M., Die griechischen Apologeten der klass- 
ischen Vaterzeit: 1. Eusebius von Casarea. Wirz- 
burg, 1896. 

GUTSCHMID, ALFRED VON, Aus Vorlesungen wuber die 
Geschichte der romischen Kaiserzeit. Leipzig, 1894. 

GwaTkIN, H. M., Eusebius of Caesarea, in Lectures on 
ecclesiastical history delivered in Norwich Cathedral. 
London, 1896. 


EUSEBIUS 27 


Harnack, A., Eusebius, in Geschichte der altchristlichen 
Litteratur. Vol. Il, 242 ff. Leipzig, 1894. 

Hety, V., Eusébe de Césarée, ‘premier historien de 
lV’ Eglise. Paris, 1877. 

HiuieEr, E., Eusebius und Cyrillus, in Rhein. Mus. N. F. 
25. Bd. (1870), 253-262. 

LicHTFOoOT, J. B., Eusebius of Caesarea, in Dictionary 
of Christian Biography, Vol. Il, 308-348. (Anti- 
quated in many places.) 

PREUSCHEN, E., Eusebius, in Prot. Realencyc., Vol. V, 
605-618. 

ScHwartz, E., Eusebios, in Pauly-Wissowa Realencyc., 
Vol. VI, 1370-1439. 

STEIN, F. G., Eusebius, Bischof von Casarea. Wurzburg, 
1859. 

Van DEN GHEYN, Eusébe, in VicouROUx, Dictionnaire 
de la Bible, Vol. II, 2051-2056. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON EUSEBIUS 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


BicELMAIR, A., Zur Theologie des Eusebius von Caesarea, 
in Festschrift fur Georg von Hertling. Kempten, 
IQI4. 

CaAvALLERA, L., Le schisme d’Antioche. Paris, 1905. 

CoNYBEARE, F. C., The Oldest Versions of Eusebius’ His- 
tory of the Church, in the Academy, Vol. XLIV 
(1893), pp. 14 ff. 

DuormeE, P. Les sources de le Chronique d’Eusébe, in 
Revue Biblique, N.S. Vol. VII (1910), pp. 233 ff. 

Fritzn, E., Beitrdge zur sprachlich-stilistischen Wiirdi- 
gung des Eusebios. Leipzig, gto. 

Gorres, F., Zur Kritik des Eusebius und Lactantius, in 
Philologus, Vol. XXXVI (1877), pp. 594 ff. 

HapMeE., A., Die Entstehung der Kirchengeschichte des 
Eusebius von Caesarea untersucht. Essen, 1896. 


28 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Harris, J. R., Euthalius and Eusebius, in Hermas in 
Arcadia and other essays. Cambridge, 1896. 

HEIKEL, I. A., Kritische Beitrdge zu den CORSE 
Schriften des Eusebius. Leipzig, 19tt. 

Kaye, J., The Ecclesiastical History of Eusebius. Lon- 
don 488, 

LAwterR, H. J., Eusebiana. Essays on the Ecclesiastical 
History of Eusebius. New York, 1912. 

LAWLER, H. J., The Chronology of Eusebius’ “ Martyrs 
of Palestine,’ in Hermathena, Vol. XXV (1908), 
pp. 177 ff. 

Lro, F., Die griechisch-romische Biographie nach ihrer 
literarischen form: De vita Constantini, pp. 311 ff. 
Leipzig, 1901. 

LICHTENSTEIN, A., Eusebius von Nikomedien. Halle, 
1903. 

Roos, C., De Theodoreto Clementis et Eusebii compila- 
tore. Halis, 1883. 

SALMON, G., Chronicle of Eusebius of Caesarea, in 
Dictionary of Christian Biography, Vol. Il, pp. 
348 ff. 

SCHONE, A., Die Weltchronik des Eusebius in ihrer Bear- 
beitung durch Hieronymus. Berlin, 1900. 

SCHULTZE, V., Quellenuntersuchungen zur Vita Con- 
stanti des Eusebius, in Zeitschrift fur Kirchenge- 
schichte, Vol. XIV (1894), pp. 503 ff. 

SCHWARZ, E., Die Konigslisten des Eratosthenes und 
Kastor mit Excursen tiber Interpolationen bei Afri- 
canus und Eusebius. Gottingen, 1895. 

SEECK, O., Die Urkunden der Vita Constantini, in Zeit- 
schrift ftir Kirchengeschichte, Vol. XVIII, pp. 
B2 Te. 

SENuys, D., Les Canons d’ Eusébe, d’Annianos d’An- 
dronicos d’apres Elie de Nisibe, in Byzantische Zeit- 
schrift, Vol. XXII (1913), pp. 1 ff. 

TRIEBER, C., Zur Kritik des Eusebius, in Hermes, Vol. 
XXIX (1894), pp. 124 ff. 


EUSEBIUS 29 


TurneER, C. H., The Early Episcopal Lists, in Journal of 
Theological Studies, 1900. 

VETTER, P., Ueber die armenische uebersetzung der 
Kirchengeschichte des Eusebius, in Theologische 
Quartalschrift, Vol. LXIII (1881), pp. 250 ff. 


OROSIUS (c. 380 —c. 420) 


WrtiaM M. THomas Gamstie, M.A. 
Catholic University of America 


HE comparatively little we know about 

Orosius is enough to sharpen curiosity as 

to how far he is illuminated and how far 
overshadowed by the great name with which he is 
most inseparably associated. He was, clearly, if we 
judge by his writings, more than an echo of St. 
Augustine; and while he was far from being any- 
thing comparable, say, to what Plato was to Soc- 
rates, his relation to his master had more dignity 
and mental kinship than that which obtained be- 
tween James Boswell and his hero Samuel Johnson. 
Orosius was a young priest, perhaps of precocious 
gifts— for his associates allude to him, however 
respectfully, as though he were scarcely more than 
a boy— who came to the great African Doctor to 
learn such psychological and sociological principles 
as were consistent with Catholic doctrine, so that he 
might be the better equipped to fight the Church’s 
battle with heresy. 

When he entered the lists of controversy, Orosius 
showed great keenness and grasp of the issues but 
(probably through youthful rashness and inexperi- 
ence) drew upon himself the fire of a hostile and 
irritated Bishop, and so compromised the success of 

30 


OROSIUS 31 


his polemic. At the suggestion of his master, how- 
ever, he had already begun work on a piece of 
apologetic. which occupied and still occupies a 
unique place in the development of the Christian 
view of the story of human institutions. Orosius, in 
his survey of the catastrophes of the past, was act- 
ing as the mouthpiece for the Patristic interpreta- 
tion of history, the core of which was to be found 
in the Old and New Testaments and in Catholic 
tradition and definitions. Yet the style and the re- 
flections in this as in his other writings, have vivid 
marks of individuality. 

Four years, or five at the most, cover all that is 
known of the career of Orosius. In that time — be- 
tween the year 414 (or 413 at the earliest) and the 
year 417 (or 418 at the latest ) — he came into first- 
hand and interested contact with the most typically 
significant features that marked the beginning of 
the transition from the antique to the medieval 
world. 

Orosius was keenly alive to the cosmopolitan 
aspects of the Empire; a European whose interests 
carried him to Asia and Africa, he sensed, in an era 
when the Empire and the Church seemed to be 
welded more closely than ever together, that quality 
of universality in the Empire which corresponded 
to the Catholicity of the Church. This close associa- 
tion of Church and Empire under the Theodosian 
dynasty, was an exhilarating stimulus to unitary 
conceptions of life. Keenly as he would feel the 
ravages of war and invasion, the menace of the 


32 CHURCH’ HISTORIANS 


new “tyrants” that were assassinating and suc- 
ceeding each other, the violence and bigotry of the 
Vandals, the young Spaniard seemed to feel lifted 
and sustained, on the patriotic side, by the memory 
of the greatness of Theodosius. He seems to have 
had few, if any misgivings, as had other Latins, as 
to the epoch-making creation of the status of the 
Foederati, in which Germanic nations could be in- 
corporated into the Empire without subjugation or 
assimilation; he seemed to regard the frictions and 
the stimulations of the new race-contacts within 
the Empire as pulses of new life and growth, not 
as disintegrations of the old order. Indeed, Orosius 
seems to have been strangely blind, in spite of his 
recognition of the vicissitudes and catastrophes of 
history, to the “decline and fall” of the civiliza- 
tion under which he lived. He seems to have been 
insensible to that mood of foreboding which had 
overtaken St. Jerome when the stream of refugees 
from Alaric’s sack of Rome passed through Pales- 
tine. 

A man of a new generation, Orosius is seemingly 
exhilarated by all the new problems and dangers. 
The Priscillianist heresy had goaded him to an in- 
satiable inquiry into the nature and origin of the 
soul; he had detected in Origenism that overvalu- 
ation of created nature, that a-prioristic bargaining 
with the Creator for an apotheosis of the creature, 
which prepared him to contend with Pelagius. The 
grapple with heresies had been to Orosius the lab- 
oratory-work, under his teachers St. Augustine and 


OROSIUS 33 


St. Jerome, by which he was enabled to survey his- 
tory as the interaction of free agents whose decisions 
determined their own destiny and their own atti- 
tudes toward the universal plan, yet who at no 
point could defeat that plan. He was enabled to view 
the past of mankind as a series of vast kingdoms of 
culture which on the human side were seen to be 
determined by human weakness, pride, cupidity, 
violence, yet in which faith could discern, in dimmer 
or clearer outline, the triumphs of Omnipotence and 
Omniscience, ever turning evil into good. 

During the four or five years of what we might 
call his graduate course under St. Augustine and 
St. Jerome, Orosius, after leaving writings that be- 
cause of their acute grasp and succinct statement 
are important sources for the controversies of the 
time, produced as his masterpiece the first world- 
history, embodying the fully-developed Patristic 
doctrine of the sovereignty of God in providence 
and in grace. And after thus setting forth the rudi- 
ments of a philosophy of civilization which shaped 
the historiography of Christendom for a thousand 
years at least, Orosius disappears. Perhaps he died 
an early death; or more presumably, after the ad- 
venture of his quest for knowledge, an exciting cam- 
paign after error, and a memorable and unique 
work, the young priest may have disappeared in the 
blessed and fruitful obscurity of an ordinary cure 
of souls. 


34 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


1. LIFE OF OROSIUS 


There are two places in the Spanish Peninsula 
which are connected with the earlier unknown life 
of Orosius. In the Seven Books of Histories, he re- 
fers to “nostra Tarracona,” which is the “ Tarra- 
gon ” printed on flat flasks of sweet wine, familiar 
sight among the bottles seen in European grocery 
windows. The other place is Braga on the coast of 
Portugal. 

The evidence would be quite consistent with a 
number of hypotheses, such as, for instance, that he 
was born in Tarragon and exercised his priesthood 
in Braga. It is fairly certain that it was from the 
Diocese of Braga that he left for Africa. 

In the seventh book of the Histories, Orosius 
seems to be alluding to some personal adventure in 
which he narrowly escaped capture or violence at 
the hands of barbarians. The rhetorical form in 
which this allusion is made, if it is an allusion, 
leaves it not quite certain whether he is relating an 
experience or inventing an illustration, but there is 
a vividness in the passage that suggests biography, 
in his description of one pursued into the sea, 
threatened with hurled stones and darts, and al- 
most seized with outstretched hands, until hidden 
and protected by the unexpected descent of a 
fog. 

Whatever were the circumstances that determined 
the departure of Orosius to Africa, Orosius took 
them to be an answer to prayer and to aspiration 


OROSIUS 35 


for spiritual knowledge, and to his desire to be use- 
ful to the Church in combatting error. “Through 
thee, blessed father,’ he addresses St. Augustine, 
“through thee, I say, our Lord God by a word 
healeth those whom by the sword He hath chastised. 
To thee by God was I sent; owing to thee, I have 
hope through Him, while I ponder how it has come 
about that I came hither. I acknowledge why I 
came, — without choice, without bond, without ap- 
pointment, I departed from my country, moved by 
some hidden force, until I was carried to the shore 
of your land.” 

St. Augustine, in the letter commendatory which 
he later sent to St. Jerome with Orosius, associates 
the violence of the Vandals in Spain with the rav- 
ages of the Priscillianist heresy there, when he 
speaks of doctrines that “much more banefully 
mangle the souls of the Spaniards than do the bar- 
baric swords their bodies.” This parallel not only 
suggests in connection with other indications, that 
in some way Orosius may have come in personal 
contact with Vandal violence, but it also confirms 
other evidences that the invasions had the effect 
of intensifying the agitations of the Priscillianist 
heresy, which had persistently disturbed the peace 
of the Church in Spain, ever since the condemna- 
tion and execution of Priscillian more than thirty 
years before. A time of disturbance, of invasion and 
violence would be peculiarly vulnerable to such a 
savage, ascetic reaction against the responsibilities 
of civilized life as Priscillianism evidently was, de- 


36 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


nouncing marriage and the eating of flesh, inculcat- 
ing a dark and desperate pessimism and joyless 
fatalism that could easily react into mad license. 
The persistence of this heresy has induced some to 
connect it with the similar doctrines of the Albi- 
genses of a much later time; and they were similar 
in this, that in both instances the heresy was sup- 
ported or led by persons of rank and wealth. 

Not many decades before, Spain had been the 
most cultured and prosperous part of the Empire. 
She had given to Latin letters Seneca, Lucan, Mar- 
tial, Quintilian; to the imperial throne she had 
sent Trajan, Hadrian, and in more recent times 
Theodosius the Great himself. Even the lower half 
of the imperial shield of Theodosius bears a sym- 
bolic figure of Spain reclining, and holding the horn 
of plenty. With the period of the “tyrants ” and of 
the invasions it seems that a cultural decline had 
set in, due to the insecurity of conditions, and espe- 
cially to the drain upon the resources of families 
who formerly supported the arts, and upon whom 
fell the increasing burden of maintaining the de- 
fense and administration of the Empire. It may 
have been this desperation and uncertainty among 
those of wealth and title, that rendered them open 
to the morbid suggestions of gloomy and anti-social 
heresies. Hatred of the whole imperial system may 
have smouldered in many a patrician or decurion 
heart. Certainly something more than the odium 
theologicum entered into the bitterness that culmi- 
nated in the execution of Priscillian by Maximus. 


OROSIUS 37 


St. Augustine, in the year 415, writes of Orosius 
as a youth. Hence his birth is reckoned as coming 
between 380 and 390. Some of the events to which 
we have alluded might have occurred in his early 
childhood, or would be within the vivid memory of 
his elders. In the year 380 occurred the Spanish 
Council of Saragossa which condemned Priscillian 
ecclesiastically, he later making his ill-starred appeal 
to the secular court. In the same year the Emperor 
Theodosius the Great published the Edict proclaim- 
ing the Faith of St. Peter and his successors as the 
official Faith of the Empire, placing heresy under 
severe disabilities, and abolishing paganism as a 
public cult. In the next year the Goths were made 
Foederati of the Empire, and by the treaty were 
engaged to defend it and replenish its agricultural 
decline. This decade saw, also, the execution of Pris- 
cillian. Such were the events Orosius would hear re- 
peatedly discussed during his most impressionable 
years. 

In the thought of Orosius some trace of the in- 
fluence of these events may be seen in the habit of 
social adaptability to which he evidently schooled 
himself, warned by the new racial contacts that 
were altering the whole social complexion of the 
time, to which adaptability he seems to refer when 
he says: “‘Inter Romanos, ut dixi, Romanus, inter 
Christianos, Christianus, inter homines, homo.” And 
again — “ Utor temporarie omni terra quasi patria.” 
Something of the very real, if not always clearly 
conceived toleration that meets us often in the Pa- 


38 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


tristic period, is discernible in the often-quoted: 
‘“‘ Odisse me fateor haeresim, non haereticum.” 

The persistence of the Priscillianist heresy in 
Spain awoke in Orosius not merely a zeal to combat 
the error for the sake of social stability and spirit- 
ual truth, but, as we have noted, a desire for better 
knowledge of the nature and origin of the soul. Two 
of his fellow-priests in Braga, both named Avitus, 
had gone, one to Rome, the other to the East, and 
one of them returned with a translation of Origen, 
in which they found much that was strange, even 
though it contradicted the gloomy Priscillianists 
with a dazzling buoyancy. Creation, to be worthy 
of the Creator, must be eternal, said the Origenists; 
and in spite of the seriousness of sin, the world 
must ultimately be rid of all evil or pain. The pre- 
existence of the soul also seemed to them to be a 
necessary corollary of the assumption that all cre- 
ated spirits were originally equal. 

When Orosius, by whatever occasion he came 
to Africa, at length found himself in the presence 
of the great Doctor, and disclosed his perplexity and 
his desire for knowledge, St. Augustine requested 
him to put in writing a memorial of the tenets of 
the two systems, which could be dealt with more 
fully and at leisure. In compliance with this request, 
Orosius wrote his Commonitorium sive Consultatio 
de errore Priscillianistorum et Origenistorum. The 
analysis is admirable in its clearness and conden- 
sation. To this St. Augustine replied in his Ad 
Orosium contra Priscillianistas et Origenistas; but 


OROSIUS 39 


feeling himself unable to satisfy Orosius in some 
of his keen questions as to the origin and nature of 
the soul, he directed the young priest to make a 
journey to the Holy Land and consult St. Jerome 
on this subject. In this connection it is worth noting 
that among the didactic dialogues of St. Augustine 
is one in which Orosius is made the interlocutor, 
and is represented as asking questions as to the 
origin of evil and other difficult matters of divinity. 
Altogether the language of St. Augustine in using 
the name of Orosius seems to reflect impressions of 
a mind which could be daring and insistent in its 
inquiries, even because of, rather than in spite of, 
his readiness to submit to the authority of the 
Church; a mind that could candidly admit the diffi- 
culties of a problem all the more because of its rec- 
ognition of human limitation in the attempt of the 
intellect to solve it, and hence did not dread to ask 
questions that might prove, in the existing state of 
knowledge, unanswerable. 

The condensed statement of the leading features 
of the two opposed theories in the Consultatio of 
Orosius throws into relief the darkness and barren- 
ness of the one heresy, the specious brilliance of 
the other: of the first, he cites a Priscillianist inter- 
pretation of the Parable of the Sower: ‘“‘ ‘He who 
goeth forth sowing his seed’ (Matth. xiii, 46) ‘ was 
not a Good Sower; for’ (they assert), ‘if he were 
good, he would not have been careless; he would 
not have tossed the seed on the road, nor among 
stones, nor on waste earth.’ They would have it 


4.0 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


understood that ‘this same sower is he that scat- 
tereth captive souls in divers bodies as he willeth; 
... that by cunning, not by the power of God, all 
good results are accomplished in this world.’ ” 

After sketching the characteristic tenets of the 
Priscillianists, and their denial of Divine providence 
and of grace as decisive in earthly affairs, particu- 
larly their refusal to admit the union of soul and 
body as a matter of Divine appointment — Orosius 
tells how the two Avitus, his fellow-priests, left 
Braga to find literature that might help in combat- 
ting the errors. One went to Rome, the other to Jeru- 
salem, bringing back between them two works in 
which they hoped to find material for the purpose; 
one, a translation of Origen, the other a work of 
Victorinus, which may have been a commentary on 
Origen or an interpretation or abstract of his or 
some other Alexandrian work. The brief dismissal 
of Victorinus as containing little new, and as negligi- 
ble where he varied from Origen, indicates the exist- 
ence of a critical sense in Orosius with which he is 
not usually credited in most modern references to 
him. Certainly the statements of Orosius in this 
work have a conciseness and objectivity that at 
least suggest the scientific temper. On Origen, Oro- 
sius comments discriminately that many grandiose 
theories can be expounded from Origen at the start, 
which by a more sober and less hasty examination 
could be superseded by the truth itself. 

That the world should be created out of nothing, 
he adds, is Origen’s stumbling-block, since the 


OROSIUS Al 


Origenists argue that it is derogatory to Divine dig- 
nity that God should begin to do anything; hence 
the maxim, Deus enim quaecumque fecit, faciendo 
non coepit. Orosius then goes on to refer to Origen’s 
universalism, and to his view of the material crea- 
tion as serving a purgatorial function for the indi- 
vidual souls born within it, who on account of sins 
in a preéxistent state were allotted varying condi- 
tions of body or estate for the purpose of purgation. 
He touches on Origen’s vast cosmic conception of 
many worlds needing redemption, and requiring 
many modes of incarnation, passion and resurrection 
on the part of the Divine Word. Origen’s notion of 
the Incarnation of a phase to be ultimately trans- 
cended, not an eternal union of God with created na- 
ture, is not forgotten. In Orosius’ special interest 
in the soul, its nature and origin, we need not go 
far afield to discern a groping for sound foothold 
amid conceptions of human nature that made strife 
and chaos the hopeless element of man’s earthly 
existence, or else surrounded human destiny with 
vastness and infinities in which any true identity 
and continuity was bewildered and lost. 

Now in the mind of Augustine the destiny of man 
had taken shape as a coherent story. Birth was not 
“a sleep and a forgetting,” as the Origenists had 
it; nor was it the senseless loss of a jewel in the 
mire, as the Priscillianists had it. Birth was the real 
beginning of a story and a career, and behind birth 
was not pre-existence, but Heritage. In this concep- 
tion of heritage, human destiny became coherent. 


42 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


There were two backgrounds to the soul, its heritage 
of impotent estrangement from God, and the slender 
thread of its royal inheritance and sonship, which 
was the only clue out of the labyrinth of life, leading 
to the full heritage of grace. The destiny of the 
soul depended on whether it was content with the 
futilities of the estranged natural heritage, or 
whether it would follow the clue of its “ naturally 
Christian ” instinct to the kingdom of grace. It was 
by his fidelity to orthodoxy under St. Augustine’s 
guidance, that Orosius found his way to a view of 
the soul and of society that was fundamental, and 
even in a sense genetic and historical, because it was 
not rooted in cosmogonies and theosophies, but in 
the facts of natural, cultural, and supernatural 
heritage. 

The first of the two best-known Origenist crises 
had died down many years before, leaving, however, 
some bitternesses behind. John, Bishop of Jerusalem, 
in the nineties of the previous century, had been 
resentful against Jerome, partly on personal grounds. 
As a champion of Origen at that time, he will not 
surprise us as the friend of Pelagius in the contest 
with which we are now about to deal. In order, 
however, to appreciate the opposing currents of 
opinion in the Church at the time, we must give full 
weight to the rather strong reaction against the 
whole ascetic and monastic ideal which had made 
itself felt in more than one way, even as far back as 
the virulent coarseness of the campaign conducted 
against Priscillian by Ithacius, who accused all of 


OROSIUS 43 


Priscillianism who practised unusual abstinence. 
This revulsion against monasticism was not often 
consciously associated either with Origenism or with 
Pelagianism, for the former was enthusiastically 
supported by the Nitrian monks, while Pelagius 
made much of the disciplinary virtue of asceticism 
as compensation for his low views on grace. Yet it 
is significant that on the doctrinal side, Pelagius 
asserted that natural impulses had in them no taint 
of sinful quality, thereby removing one of the 
strongest motives toward the ascetic life. In con- 
troverting this error, St. Augustine appealed to the 
instinct of shame and indignity at the impertinences 
of the lower nature. 

Thus, at the beginning of the fifth century we 
detect, as an accompaniment of the change in the 
political and social situation that begins, however 
faintly, to take on the aspect of the medieval 
world, a subtle shift also in the centre of contro- 
versy in religion: less is said by those who would 
blunt the full force of the doctrine of the Incarna- 
tion, of the two natures of Christ; and more is said 
in attack upon the principles of sustaining and reg- 
ulating power in the Church and in the Empire. 
These attacks stigmatize nature as so vile that noth- 
ing can govern, strengthen, nor heal it; or they 
eulogize nature as endowed with infinite resources 
that make it self-regulative and self-corrective. 

Pelagius and his friend Coelestius left for Car- 
thage in 411, among the refugees that poured into 
Asia and Africa after the sack of Rome. It does not 


44 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


seem that they remained long there. Perhaps some 
premonition of the future fate of Catholic Africa 
prompted the Church there to set its house in order, 
and to keep the light of its faith trimmed and burn- 
ing; for with a preternatural clearness of vision, 
Africa rallied around her great Doctor. Pelagius 
and his friend found ‘little soil for their doctrines, 
and very soon departed for Palestine, where they 
had some reason to hope for a more welcome re- 
ception. Well versed in Greek, and familiarized with 
Greek modes of theological thought by frequent 
conferences with Rufinus in Rome before his death 
in 410 (while Rufinus was interpreting the thought 
of Origen to the Latin mind after the departure of 
Jerome to Palestine), Pelagius hoped that he 
might find the Origenist bishop John of Jerusalem 
friendly to him, and was not disappointed. It does 
not seem to be definitely ascertained how long be- 
fore the arrival of Orosius in Palestine in 415 Pe- 
lagius and his friend had been there, or whether 
they arrived the same year. 

It would seem that in any case the movements of 
Pelagius were being actively followed by priests 
and bishops who were profoundly convinced of the 
grave issues growing out of the spread of the new 
doctrines. Heros, Bishop of Arles, and Lazarus, 
Bishop of Aix-les-Bains, had resigned their Sees to 
go to the East and counteract Pelagianism. Avitus, 
one of the two fellow-priests of Orosius, was also 
there, with others mentioned by Orosius and St. 
Augustine in the writings that deal with the pro- 


OROSIUS A5 


ceedings at Palestine. It is more than possible that 
St. Augustine, who had thrown all his energies into 
the grapple with Pelagianism as into no other cause, 
discerned in the gifts of Orosius the possibility of 
help much needed in the East; and no doubt in 
sending Orosius to St. Jerome, St. Augustine made 
sure that Orosius fully grasped the Pelagian issue, 
and that he was personally qualified to present 
the matter to St. Jerome. The event justified him 
in this confidence, for the reply of St. Jerome to 
the letter of introduction marked the restoration of 
cordial relations between the two Doctors of the 
Church after long years in which silence had fol- 
lowed plain criticism on the one side and cool as- 
perity on the other. The affectionate letter of Jerome 
to Augustine contains not only explicit commenda- 
tion of Orosius, but is itself a proof of the latter’s 
ability to convince and to reconcile under delicate 
circumstances. Jerome, though himself a semi- 
Pelagian, was fairly enlisted against the denial of 
grace and the minimizing of the ravages of sin; he 
wrote against the doctrines; and in the same year, 
415, Bishop John of Jerusalem was obliged to call 
a council to examine Pelagius. 

In this diocesan council Orosius was the principal 
accuser. He testified, and Pelagius admitted, that 
Pelagius had said to him that “a man could be 
without sin and could easily observe the whole com- 
mandments of God, if he wished.” With his knowl- 
edge of Greek, Pelagius was able to explain that of 
course the help of God was necessary if a man 


46 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


should live without sin. This satisfied John, who did 
not care to go into the distinction which Pelagius 
later made, between God’s help through nature as 
originally created, and God’s help specially given 
to remedy the ravages of sin in nature. The Latins 
did not understand Greek well enough to press this 
important distinction, and moreover had the disad- 
vantage of an incompetent or (as Orosius believed) 
a malicious interpreter. They fell back on the pres- 
tige of St. Augustine, but were only ridiculed for 
their pains. Pelagius, turning Oriental pride to ac- 
count, said “Quis mihi Augustinus? ” which was 
followed by John’s assertion of his diocesan author- 
ity, “‘ Augustinus ego sum! ” Fortunately in this 
synod Pelagianism was not officially countenanced. 
The serious difficulty of language was recognized, 
and the whole matter was reserved for papal de- 
cision. 

In the same year, owing to the efforts of Heros 
and Lazarus, Bishop Eulogius of Caesarea called a 
synod at Lydda or Diospolis, which proved to be 
a worse babel of tongues and which ostensibly fa- 
vored Pelagius, though in St. Augustine’s review of 
the proceedings he construes the decision as a con- 
demnation of the Pelagian thesis, and an exculpa- 
tion of Pelagius, on the ground that Pelagius repu- 
diated or explained away his real position, and in 
view of the fact that the chief accusers of Pelagius, 
who could have testified to the errors as formerly 
held, were unable to be present. It seems, however, 
that on this occasion Pelagius distinctly stated that 


OROSIUS 47 


what he meant by adjutorium Det was nothing more 
than gratia creations, and it is hard to see how the 
synod could have failed to feel the full force of this 
definition, especially as Pelagius could speak Greek. 

Thus, failure seemed to attend this aspect of the 
Eastern pilgrimage. The futile controversy with 
Bishop John followed. Two consolations remained 
to Orosius: first, that he had succeeded in arousing 
to the menace the great scholar and ascetic of Beth- 
lehem, irascible and difficult though he was, and in 
his old age; second, through the recent discovery of 
the relics of the Proto-martyr St. Stephen by Lu- 
cian, a priest of Kaphor Gamala near Jerusalem, 
Orosius was enabled to carry a portion of these with 
him, together with letters from the discoverer and 
from Avitus the older fellow-priest who was now in 
Palestine, who translated Lucian’s letter, addressed 
to all Christians and attesting to the facts of the dis- 
covery. Associations with St. Jerome were to leave 
their mark later on the’ Histories; and without 
doubt he learned from St. Jerome the theory of 
“creationism ”’ in regard to the origin of the in- 
dividual soul, which has come to be the favored 
opinion in the Church. 

After a brief stay with his master in Hippo, 
Orosius embarked for his home; but in the island 
of Minorca he learned that the Vandals, who had 
entered Spain in 409, were in possession of Bracara, 
which was not far from Galicia, where one division 
of the invaders ultimately settled. Orosius left the 
relics with the Bishop of Minorca, where they be- 


48 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


came the occasion of a memorable revival of reli- 
gious fervor, notable on account of the conversion 
of a number of Jews. Returning to Africa, he com- 
pleted the Seven Books of Histories against the 
Pagans which St. Augustine had requested him to 
undertake, as a historical proof of the thesis of the 
third book of the City of God. We hear of him no 
more; and are left with quite vivid and definite im- 
pression of the ardor, the piety, the venturesome- 
ness, the sensitiveness and the hero-worship of the 
young Iberian priest, who under his master explored 
world-history even as his later Peninsular kindred 
explored the globe itself. 


2. WoRKS OF OROSIUS 


Besides an unedited letter to St. Augustine, the 
writings of St. Augustine, as far as possible in 
chronological order, are, first in the year 414, the 
Commonitorium sive Consultatio de errore Priscil- 
lianistorum et Origenistorum; next, in the year 415, 
the Liber Apologeticus contra Pelagium; as for the 
Septem Libri Historiarum contra Paganos, that was 
evidently completed in 417 or 418. Moerner, fol- 
lowed by Teuffel, places the composition of the first 
part of the Histories during the first stay of Oro- 
sius with Augustine. Ebert, however, comparing cer- 
tain sections in one of St. Augustine’s letters with 
statements in the dedication of the Histories, con- 
cludes that since five, at most, of the books of the 
City of God had been written when Orosius went 


OROSIUS 49 


to Palestine, and since St. Augustine was at work 
on the eleventh book when Orosius undertook to 
write the Histories, the latter could not have been 
begun until either the first return to Africa from 
the East, or the second return from Minorca. There 
is no disagreement about the general time of the 
close of the book in 417 or 418, as that is deter- 
mined by the point at which Orosius ends the con- 
temporary part of the history. If Ebert is right as 
to the beginning of the Histories the date would 
be 416, or at the end of 415 at the earliest. The 
Liber Apologeticus would be written before leaving 
Palestine, when the events of the controversy would 
be still fresh in his mind, in 415. 

The plan and framework of the Seven Books of 
Histories against the Pagans is based upon two prin- 
cipal sources: the first is the conception of St. 
Augustine of the relation of the Divine dispensa- 
tions of the Jewish and of the Catholic Church, to 
the equally Divine dispensations overruling the 
great world-empires with which the Church of the 
Old and New Testaments had come in contact. The 
second source is the chronology, contributed by 
Jerome, by which the periods of the Babylonian and 
the Roman Empires are represented as correspond- 
ing to each other in time. This chronology was orig- 
inally the Chronicon of Eusebius, corrected by St. 
Jerome. Both these sources are ultimately to be re- 
ferred to the apocalyptic prophecies of the Old and 
New Testaments, especially in the Book Daniel, in 
which four kingdoms are symbolized as succeeding 


50 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


one another. Orosius, under St. Augustine’s tutelage, 
takes Babylon and Rome as the two chief empires 
affecting the destiny of the Church, and related to 
each other in some way analogous to the relation 
between the Churches of the Old and the New dis- 
pensations. Macedonia and Carthage are taken as 
the two intermediate empires which transmit the 
cultural heritage of Babylon to Rome, and serve as 
the guardians of Rome in her period of minority. 
Orosius begins his work with a geographic descrip- 
tion of the globe as the theatre of history, in the 
three divisions which he himself, as pilgrim, inquirer, 
and contender for the Faith, had touched in his 
travels. 

The division into seven books is in places rather 
strained in the interest of symbolism, just as the 
chronology of the Empires suffers some gentle vio- 
lence for the sake of symmetry. Regularity and cor- 
respondence in time-periods was a part of the at- 
tempt to exhibit evidence of providential design in 
history, yet it was not essential to the main argu- 
ment of the Histories. It is necessary to stress the 
fact that the Patristic historiography makes no 
pretenses at an explanation of the counsels of God 
in the course of human events; the thesis is merely 
to show that calamities had not increased under the 
“Christian times” and that Christian faith sup- 
plied antidotes to temporal evil that pagan sufferers 
lacked. There is far less tendency to trace events to 
some supposed design of Providence, than there is 
among modern positivists the tendency to see the 


OROSIUS 51 


present as the inevitable unfolding of some quite 
imperfectly understood circumstance in the past. 
Indeed humility in the presence of Divine wisdom 
was a far more effective check upon a priori views 
in the Patristic historian, than agnosticism is a re- 
straint upon the cock-sureness of a Wells. Faith in 
the Divine wisdom, power, and mercy, and ac- 
knowledgment of human ill-desert is sufficient usu- 
ally as the intellectual background of the catalogue 
of human miseries in the Histories, without any 
attempt to fathom the particular purpose of God 
in any given event. And the more important gen- 
eralizations, far from being wholly subjective, were 
rooted in objective facts and age-long developments 
in the Mediterranean world which nothing in our 
own time has been able to explain away. Other civi- 
lizations existed apparently unchanged for millen- 
niums in other scarce-known regions of the world, 
but in them development had reached its limit, and 
they could await only crystallization or decay. 
Only around the Mediterranean was civilization 
dynamic, ever dissolving and transforming itself 
anew as power shifted from race to race, from east 
to west. During the Theodosian dynasty the ele- 
ments of Mediterranean history could be viewed 
for the first time with a complete perspective, and 
the eye that first saw this perspective was the eye 
of Augustine. Perhaps he viewed it not without the 
distortion of patriotic bias, for Egypt is ignored 
among the great Empires and Carthage is coupled 
with Macedonia. Yet the two pivotal centres of the 


52 CHURCH! HISTORIANS 


dynamic civilization of antiquity are just where 
St. Augustine and Orosius placed them, in Meso- 
potamia and Rome. 

And there were some most significant facts that 
Orosius saw in clearer and more hopeful outline 
than did either St. Jerome or St. Augustine. St. 
Jerome, the oldest of the three, the one most steeped 
in the life and feeling of antiquity, had been shaken 
and stunned by the humiliation of Rome by Alaric, 
which to him spelled chaos itself — perhaps the 
very trump of Judgment would next be heard. In 
St. Augustine’s outlook there is a detached tenta- 
tiveness which forbids him to be wholly sanguine 
about the future of society. Yet both St. Augustine 
and St. Jerome, though dubious about the future, 
recognize a providential relation between the Em- 
pire and the Church, somewhat analogous to St. 
Joseph’s guardianship of the Holy Child. It re- 
mained for the youthful Orosius to see the Empire 
at work as an auxiliary to the Church in adjusting 
to each other the conflicting races. He assumes, with 
his teachers, that Rome is the last of the great 
apocalyptic kingdoms, and that with the fall of 
Rome must come the world’s end. But he seems to 
see that the Empire is standing the strain of the 
new times. Troeltsch is hardly wrong in regarding 
St. Augustine as the “ Antique Christian” in spite 
of the modern note that is struck in the introspec- 
tive and psychological interest of the Confessions. 
Something in the pages of Orosius makes us aware 
that the Middle Ages have all but begun; if we 


OROSIUS 53 


analyze this quality, we shall find that one of its 
elements is the fact that the German is not, as to 
the older men, a mere barbarian intruder, but an 
object of vivid human interest. When St. Augustine 
dwells on the comparative mildness of the Goths in 
the sack of Rome, it is almost as if he were speak- 
ing of a “mild” winter, or of a tornado that had 
spared a church full of worshippers. Even the ideal- 
ization of the Germans by Tacitus was not devoid 
of the sentimental patronage of the safe and supe- 
rior being toward the “noble savage”? whom he is 
not averse to use as a foil for the tiresome moments 
of civilization. As for St. Augustine, he does not 
even deign to speak of the intruders as Goths, much 
less mention the name of Alaric. He still affects the 
old classic vagueness about the wild indistinguish- 
able Scythian hordes. But the Vandal penetra- 
tion of Spain has shocked Orosius into observing 
that there are barbarians and barbarians; that some 
are savage destroyers, and others capable of defend- 
ing and supporting civilization. If the Vandal was a 
wild beast, the Goth was a human being. Orosius 
began, doubtless, with a loyal distrust of Stilicho as 
a watchdog with wolf blood, who was sure to betray 
the Empire to his Vandal kindred. But he eventually 
looked to Visigothic leadership in Spain as the 
only force that could be trusted to counteract dis- 
order. The admiration of Orosius for Athaulf, kins- 
man of Alaric, colors the whole political outlook of 
the Histories, where contemporary matters are dealt 
with. Athaulf had been assassinated at Saragossa in 


54 CHURCH VIS TORIANS 


415, the most eventful of those four years of the life 
of Orosius with which we are acquainted, and the 
memory of him was a vivid one in the mind of Oro- 
sius, as he was busy on his Histories the next year. 
Athaulf, or Adolphus, was a short, forceful man 
who as the close kinsman of Alaric, held together 
something of the chief’s following after his death, 
and was eventually recognized as imperial repre- 
sentative in Aquitania and western Spain; he kept, 
however, in his household a creature called Attalus, 
whom he and Alaric had set up as Emperor, and 
whom Athaulf reserved for a favorable occasion to 
enthrone once more, should he judge that conditions 
required it. After some oscillation of policy, Athaulf 
seems to have served loyally under Honorius in 
Aquitania and Spain. He had captured during the 
siege of Rome, and later married, Placidia, sister of 
the Emperor, himself wearing the costume of a Ro- 
man dignitary during the nuptials. Orosius puts into 
his mouth a speech which lights up the principal 
issue of political and cultural history throughout the 
whole earlier part of the Middle Ages; which epito- 
mizes the choice that confronted Clovis, Pepin of 
Heristal, Charlemagne, Rollo the Norman, and 
Rollo’s kinsmen, William the Conqueror and Robert 
of Sicily. He had once, said Athaulf, hoped to replace 
the Roman Empire by Gothia, and to make his own 
name Ataulphus take the place of Augustus; but 
now he was convinced that only by Roman laws 
could the world be ruled; and he was resolved now 
to use Gothic power to support Roman laws. Here, 


OROSIUS 55 


at the very juncture when the power of Rome seemed 
cracking and crumbling, we perceive that deep sense 
of the permanence of Rome, of which the Histories 
much more than the City of God is the classical 
embodiment. 

The speech of Athaulf seems to reveal the race- 
pride of the Teuton, who was conscious of possess- 
ing a distinct culture of his own, and who found it 
difficult, even bitter (as later in the case of The- 
odoric), to adopt the Latin culture. And yet it was 
just because the Goth, among Germans, was most 
conscious of a German culture worthy of preserva- 
tion, that he was the first among Germans to sense 
its peril at the hands of the destructive Huns that 
pressed from the North. Other German tribes, it 
seemed, were content to be vassals to the Hun; but 
the Goths, facing the choice before them, elected to 
reénforce, even at the cost of subordination and as- 
similation, their own system by one of higher type, 
than to disintegrate it by amalgamation with a lower 
type. The Hun hegemony must have had its argu- 
ments as well as its pressures and compulsions, as 
may be seen in the account of Priscus, the historian 
who accompanied an embassage to the court of 
Attila and discussed civilization there with a run- 
away or captive Greek. The Goths, in seeking fed- 
eration under the Empire, had made momentous 
cultural choice; they had given their voice to the 
proposition that civilization, slowly and painfully 
won, is not a thing to be lightly abandoned to fol- 
low the restless impulses of tribe or group contagion. 


56 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


The Volkerwanderung had within it no inherent 
seminal constructive principle, no aspiration to 
progress in itself; at most, it was the uneasy tossing 
of a sluggard at dawn, to avoid the pricking of the 
sunlight. So far was it hopeful, that it was un- 
easy, and a movement, and therefore an energy, 
however blind and passive. 

It was the heavy drive of this vague, resentful 
movement southward of the northern nomads, that 
compelled the frontier tribes of Germans to choose 
between civilization and a mass-movement of self- 
conscious barbarism that was gathering human ma- 
terial like an avalanche, preparing to overwhelm the 
objects of its dull hatred, the Caio and the 
Church. 

It was nothing but the deadly logic of facts 
that had forced the Goths to decide; and having 
decided, they bent their energies to defend the Em- 
pire with a German heartiness, while with a Ger- 
man stubbornness they held to their own tribal in- 
terpretation of Christianity: Arianism. The history 
of the next four hundred years, until the defeat of 
the Lombards by Charlemagne, is the story of the 
Church’s contest with the stubbornness of the Goth 
and the Lombard, willing to accept the Empire and 
its culture and yet reluctant to accept the Faith of 
the Empire and its obedience. 


Thus, in the contemporary part of his Histories, 
especially in the seventh book, Orosius strikes a 
historical chord that is seen to vibrate throughout 


OROSIUS 57 


the Middle Ages —the subordination of race-im- 
pulse to cultural discipline, and the equally emphatic 
subordination of cultural interests to the Faith. The 
modern world has seen the reverse process — first a 
revolt of cultural interests against Faith, followed 
hard by a revolt of race-impulses against common 
culture as well as common Faith. 

It is not surprising that the Histories of Oro- 
sius dominated the historiography of the Medieval 
period; it not only supplied the framework for a 
philosophy of history, but it contained some rudi- 
mentary inquiries in the direction of the history of 
institutions. Loyal to the Empire as Orosius is, he 
has no illusions as to how empires come into being, 
as we discern at his first plunge into the beginning 
of history (as the classical world tended to reckon 
it) in the conquests of Ninus. By his attempts to 
subjugate the Scythians, hitherto a peaceful folk, 
Ninus had only made them bloodthirsty and preda- 
tory, so that ever since, invasions from the north 
were the recurrent nightmare of western Asia. Thus, 
the foundations of civilization had been laid in 
blood, booty and enslavement, as Orosius saw them; 
yet out of the forces of aggression and acquisition, 
the means of defense, of conservation and of secur- 
ity could be forged. The violence and the luxury 
and dissipation of Ninus and Semiramis were over- 
ruled by the interests of the inheritors of their Em- 
pire to keep and cultivate its wealth. Such were the 
beginnings of Babylon, the civilization between the 
two rivers. The hand of God so turns man’s evil into 


58 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


good that what had begun in violence and prodigal- 
ity could be built up in relative safety, peace and 
productiveness. Orosius’ view of the nomad beyond 
the pale of empire, like that of Herodotus, is not 
unsympathetic; the Scythians are the “ hardiest of 
men, though they be the poorest ”’; they are, in their 
restless ferocity, more sinned against than sinning, 
for they must protect themselves against exploita- 
tion and slavery. In contemplating the career of 
Alexander, Orosius has a vivid sense of the contrast 
between history as transmitted among the conquer- 
ing race, and that which filters down among the 
vanquished folk. The one is a story of triumph, 
peace and plenty; the other a story of miseries and 
humiliations, kept alive only by pity. Here is a 
most pregnant critical hint of universal history, 
worthy of the latest sociological school! The task 
of relating the calamities of mankind has suddenly 
brought the fifth-century scholar into company with 
the statistician of occupational diseases and acci- 
dents, and of the mortality of infants. Orosius 
clearly suggests that history is not merely the story 
of wars and of rulers, but the story of the humble, 
who are thankful for peace. In dealing with the 
period of Rome’s expansion and aggression, he 
dwells on the significant controversy after the con- 
quest of Scipio, between those who would destroy 
Carthage for the sake of Rome’s security, and those 
who, fearing the moral effects of Rome’s security, 
would preserve Carthage as Rome’s whetstone. 
Noting briefly that the Romans decided finally to 


OROSIUS 59 


sacrifice their whetstone, Carthage, to their de- 
sire for safety, the writer seems to check himself 
on the verge of a caustic comment, by remarking 
in effect that even a whetstone can turn the edge of 
a knife if the pressure of the whetting is overdone. 

The general plan of the work may be thus briefly 
stated: A geographical sketch opens the history, 
after the dedication in the beginning. The Mediter- 
ranean Sea is called ‘“‘ Mare Nostrum,” and Asia, 
Africa and Europe are the principal divisions. The 
stretches of northeastern Europe and Siberia seem 
unreckoned with. There is some detailed knowledge 
of the East, as far as Ceylon. The knowledge of 
Africa is mainly confined to the Berber and Lybian 
coast-lands, Egypt and Abyssinia. There is some 
knowledge of the British Isles, but the favorite 
ocean-route thither is indicated by the statement 
that Ireland is between Spain and Britain. Iceland 
is called Thule. 

After this sketch, and an outline of the begin- 
nings of history based upon Latin abstract-transla- 
tions or compendiums of Herodotus, Ctesias, or 
authors that used them, Orosius plunges into Ro- 
man history, carrying it as far as the sack of Rome 
by the Gauls, which in humiliation and devastation 
he stresses as surpassingly more crushing than the 
sack of Alaric. The Greek Empire is sketched from 
Athens till the defeat of Pyrrhus, and then the 
career of Carthage is sketched from its origin to its 
destruction. Finally the Roman Empire is resumed 
in connection with the coming of Christ and the 


60 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


history of the Church. The narrative ends with the 
time of the Visigoth Vallia in 417. The style is 
sometimes terse to the point of obscurity, sometimes 
rhetorical and flowing. The influence of Virgil and 
Cicero have been observed, and of the two teachers 
of Orosius the style of Jerome seems to have left 
more trace. Polybius, Livy and Tacitus are used, 
but mostly at second hand in abstracts by writers 
like Florus and Eutropius. The Latin version of 
Trogus by Justin, and Suetonius, are much used. 
For Jewish and Christian history, besides the sacred 
sources, Plutarch and Eusebius are his aids. Of the 
chronological part of the work, mention has already 
been made. 

The zealous orthodoxy of Orosius and his relation 
with St. Augustine would predispose toward a fa- 
vorable reception of the work in the Church. In a 
council of seventy bishops at Rome in 494, Pope 
Gelasius I alluded to Orosius as “ virum eruditis- 
simum ” and as having arranged a “ most indispen- 
sable work against the calumnies of the pagans, 
woven together with admirable brevity.” 

The influence of Orosius stimulated the construc- 
tion of the Chronicon of St. Isidore of Seville (560— 
636) and his Hzstoria de regibus Gothorum, Wan- 
dalorum et Suevorum, which incorporated much of 
its material. St. Isidore also continued the De viris 
ilustribus begun by St: Jerome and Gennadius. St. 
Gregory of Tours, too, fits his history of the Franks 
into the Orosian framework of a universal history. 
King Alfred’s version for his Anglo-Saxon subjects 


OROSIUS 61 


supplemented the geography by accounts from the 
voyages of Wulstan and Othere about the Baltic 
regions. In the schools of the Carolingian renais- 
sance, the Histories had an important place, and 
the parent book, the De Civitate Dei, was constantly 
the study of the Emperor himself, who strove to 
model his realm upon its conceptions. 

Otto von Freising, in the Hohenstaufen period, 
constructs his Chronicon wholly on the Augustinian- 
Orosian framework of world-history, calling the 
work De Duabus Civitatibus. The title, also, of 
Guibert of Nogent’s Gesta Dei per Francos is char- 
acteristically dominated by the providential concep- 
tion of history as elaborated by the Hzstories and 
the City of God. Dante makes mention of Orosius 
seven times in his works. 

The ‘‘ Compendious History of Orosius ” came to 
be the standard textbook for profane history, to 
such an extent that two hundred manuscripts sur- 
vive. With the process of time the abbreviated title 
of the book took the indistinguishable form Ormesta, 
which is generally thought to be a corruption of the 
abbreviation of Orosii misericorum mundi historia 
to some such form as “ Or. mis. m. Hist.’’ Some few 
have thought the word was a corruption of the word 
Orchestra, meaning the stage of the world’s drama, 
and referring to the geographical sketch with which 
the history opens. 

One of the noblest works based on the Orosian 
tradition is Bossuet’s Discourse on Universal His- 
tory, in which, as Brunetiere says, the great Bishop 


62 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


has without any innovation developed a philosophy 
which, by deductions and applications he had dis- 
covered to well-known laws, he has made peculiarly 
his own. 


For the past thirty years, historiography’s own 
account of itself, the “history of history,” has been 
gathering an ever-increasing interest. There is a 
growing sense of need for synthesis, and a great 
weariness of those maxims that would keep the 
mind busy following processes in order to distract 
it from judging by principles. Just because the 
Patristic historiography represents synthesis, J. T. 
Shotwell, in his survey of historiography, gives an 
important place to Orosius, even while smiling at 
the mathematical time-schedule on which he ar- 
ranges the rise and fall of empires. In writing his 
world-history, Orosius touched important questions 
in the history of institutions. The philosophy that 
conceives of successive providential dispensations 
sees human life under a social category, and ad- 
vancing from stage to stage. Such philosophy as 
was implied in Herodotus, in his feelings after a 
universal history, could hardly render history under 
a universal concept, very attractive to the pagan 
mind, and it is not difficult to see why the ancients 
clung close to the history of the local community, 
much as they hugged the shores in their navigation. 
Life, according to Herodotus, was a cycle, carrying 
the fortunes of man, individually and in the aggre- 
gate, up and down, returning upon itself. Human 


OROSIUS 63 


dignity was possible only by a graceful and cool 
acceptance of an undignified fate, and a Stoic might 
enjoy a secret consolation in his own moral supe- 
riority to a senseless destiny. There were pagans, 
such as the followers of the Socratic school, who 
hoped that behind the veil was hidden a beneficent 
end; but such conceptions were found in poetry 
rather than in historiography; in the Aeneid rather 
than in Tacitus and Livy. Where the historians gen- 
eralized, their view was nearer that of the satirist 
than of the epic poet, and they saw only the vanish- 
ing virtue of an elder and better time. But to the 
Christian Patristic historian the perspective was re- 
versed, and looked forward, not backward. Behind 
was the Fall, and the slow struggle out of brutali- 
zation and enslavement; ahead was emancipation 
and the mastery of life’s materials. The soul found 
greatness, not only in itself, but in its destiny, in 
its conscious and loyal cooperation with that des- 
tiny. And destiny was not a wheel, revolving drear- 
ily, but a developing growth, like a vineyard in 
which the Husbandman at times varies the cultural 
treatment at different stages of recovery or growth; 
like a march, a procession or pilgrimage, an Epic 
or Drama, with laws of unities and of varieties as 
well, with an inciting moment, a crescendo of tragic 
or epic interest, and a climax, with woven and com- 
plex rhythms and syncopations throughout, in which 
design is concealed as well as ultimately vindicated. 

Such was the Patristic philosophy of history, and 
of the cultural story of mankind. All the more sig- 


64 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


nificant that, at a time which is stigmatized as a 
period of decline and decay, when men’s minds 
seemed indeed to have lost their grip upon mundane 
interests and realities, when the crack of the strain 
upon ordered life was being heard — Orosius and 
his teachers should have taught Christendom to 
think of history in terms of progress. The very 
crudities and superficialities of the Histories, their 
obvious deficiencies in the spirit of accurate re- 
search, their contentment with predigested and sec- 
ond- and third-hand sources, their preoccupation 
with the forensic and apologetic interest —do not 
vitiate the essential value and importance of the 
Orosian contribution to historiography. Just because 
the gloomy barbarism of Priscillianism had been 
faced in Spain; just because the coarse anti-ascetic 
barbarisms of Vigilantius and Jovinian had been 
met by Jerome in Rome and Palestine; just because 
the sanguine and wasteful barbarism of Pelagius (a 
savage creed in spite of the Hellenic knowledge he 
had and of the Oriental sympathy he met) had 
been contested with all the concentrated power of 
St. Augustine’s mature years; and just because the 
Empire was compelled to leave Britain ungarrisoned 
and Gaul and Spain overrun with Vandals and 
mushroom tyrants, in order to adjust itself to its 
internal racial task, and to realize in the West, that 
the civilization that had undertaken to protect the 
Church must ultimately find in the Church alone 
its permanent support — just because of the con- 
junction of all these elements of solution, crisis, de- 


OROSIUS 65 


feat and victory in the early fifth century, Orosius 
was enabled to sound a clarion that literally echoed 
for a millennium: Civilization was a work of God 
utilizing yet overruling the passions of man, and 
must be protected in order to conserve and develop 
those human values and virtues of race-inheritance 
which sin has not destroyed, whether they be in a 
regenerate or unregenerate state; and the Church, 
the sphere of regenerate human nature, must be in- 
creasingly found to be the only stable support for 
civilization. 

Such was the trumpet, not of optimism but of 
meliorism, that Orosius sounded throughout the 
darkness, the dawn and the new darkness of the 
centuries that followed. 

More than a thousand years later, while William 
Shakespeare was composing one of his greatest 
tragedies, and was nearing the “ climbing sorrow” 
of its piteous climax, the scene of which was on a 
lightning-swept heath, where raved a crownless and 
forsaken old king —it would seem as though in the 
ears of the poet, while in the imaginative energy of 
composition, there kept ringing the brave music of 
a song-fragment —a line whose sense had little to 
do with the theme, yet whose feeling harmonized 
with that of the tragedy. This line, which the poet 
actually put into the mouth of the companions of 
King Lear, seems to have been a snatch from some 
old song which kept alive those very exploits of 
Charlemagne’s paladins which Cervantes had not 
long before taught Europe to laugh at in the tales 


66 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of Orlando Furioso, even in the Spain of Orosius and 
his Visigoth heroes. Now this fragment of a ballad 
refrain was an echo of the many legends of that 
Frankish hero Roland, who lived four centuries after 
Orosius and seven centuries before Cervantes and 
Shakespeare; a hero commemorated all over Ger- 
many by curious carved pillars, and whose name 
sounded in all medieval romance from Castile to the 
Rhineland. 

The haunting quality of this line was felt again, 
still three centuries after Shakespeare, by another 
poet, Browning, who wove around it the depiction 
of a dauntless heart, surrounded by an atmosphere 
of utter desolation, who, in spite of the dreary doom 
that awaited him, set his slug-horn to his lips and 
blew his blast of defiance and of faith: 


Childe Rowland to the dark tower came. 


Orosius was the “slug-horn” sounded by the 
Latin Fathers of the Church, just as the ramparted 
and bastioned gloom of the “ dark ages” began to 
deepen. And if we might counter this line with an- 
other, to voice the inner conviction that inspired the 
first historical interpretation of human progress, we 
could not do better than to take it from the Song of 
Roland itself, as the minstrels and jongleurs used 
to sing it, as it was sung at that Battle of Hastings 
that decided the cultural history of an important 
nation: 


Les paiens ont tort, les chrétiens ont droict! 


OROSIUS 67 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


The principal sources for the life of Orosius are: for 
his nativity and early life — his own writings and a letter 
(mentioned by Gams, infra) of Bishop Braulio of Sata- 
gossa to St. Fructuosus of Braga, cited from a Spanish 
collection of the letters of Braulio by FLorez-Risco, 
vol. 30, p. 395 of Espana Sagrada (1775); a letter of 
Avitus, a co-priest of Orosius, mentioned in another con- 
nection, may also have a bearing on this; for the pil- 
grimages to Africa and Palestine — his own writings and 
those of St. Augustine and St. Jerome in which he is men- 
tioned, or which concern the Oriental phase of the Pela- 
gian controversy. The best text of Orosius’ Consultatio is 
that in vol. xviii of Corp. script. eccl. Lat., containing also 
works of Priscillian comparatively recently discovered, 
and edited by ScHeEpps; of his Liber A pologeticus and the 
Histories, the ZANGEMEISTER text in vol. v, Jbid. (Vienna, 
1882). The letters of St. Augustine and St. Jerome that 
are most germane are in Migne, Patrologia latina, xxxiii, 
720, 748, 752; xliv, 343; zbid., St. Augustinus, vol. 2, 
caput xliii. For the homeward journey, its interruption at 
Minorca, and matters relative to the relics of St. Stephen: 
The letter of the priest Avitus to Palchomius, Bishop of 
Braga (Migne, P. L., S. Augustinus, vol. 7, p. 805); the 
letter of Bishop Severus of Minorca (P. L., 41, pp. 821 
ff.); the sequel of Orosius’ sojourn there, is treated as 
legendary by Ramon Ruiz AMaApo in Cath. Encyc., vol. x, 
p. 332. Antonio Roic, a native scholar, defended its 
authenticity in 1787. For reflections of fifth-century esti- 
mates or impressions of Orosius: The notice of Orosius in 
the continuation of St. Jerome’s De viribus illustribus by 
Gennadius of Marseilles; also the praise of the learning 
and acumen of Orosius by Pope Gelasius in his catalogue 


68 © CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of approved and condemned writings published to the 
synod of Rome, 494 (£p., xlii. See J. F. X. Murpuy, 
Cath. Encyc., iv., art. Gelastus; HAVERCAMP, p. xxviii; 
BoswortTH, infra, p. 288). 

Among secondary sources and discussions on the life of 
Orosius: DALMASSES y Roz (Dissertacion historica por la 
Patria de Paulo Orosio etc. Barcelona, 1702) represents 
extreme opinion in favor of the birth of Orosius in Tar- 
ragon “ y no Braga in Portugal”; just as exclusively in 
favor of Braga, is Pius Bonifatius Gams in his Kzrchen- 
geschichte von Spanien (1864), II, (i) 398 ff. 

The birthplace of Orosius is also discussed by Th. de 
MOoERNER (infra, 1844) and by EBERT (infra, 1889). 
Discussions on the biography of Orosius are also con- 
tained in J. Boswortu, King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Ver- 
sion of the Compendius History of the World by Orosius 
etc. (London, 1859); in Gams (op. cit., 1864); J. P. 
KrrscuH, Orosius in Cath. Encyc., xi, p. 322; and more re- 
cently in G. F. Browne, King Alfred’s Book (New 
York, 1920). 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON OROSIUS 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


On the historical works used by Orosius—Th. de 
MoeERNER: De Orosii vita eiusque historiarum libris vii 
adversus paganos (Berlin, 1844),— the first thorough 
treatment of Orosius with advantages of modern scholar- 
ship. MOERNER’s conclusions are debated by A. EBERT 
in Allgemeine Geschichte d. Litt. des Mittelalters (2d ed. 
Leipzig, 1889, I, 337-334) who differs from him on the 
time of the writing of the Histories. Karl ZANGEMEISTER 
also deals with the writings used by Orosius in the 
introduction to his text (op. cit., 1882) and in his Choro- 
graphie des Orosius (Berlin, 1887) he treats the geograph- 
ical prelude to the Histories. W. S. TEuFFEL: Ge- 
schichte der roemischen Litteratur (5th ed. Leipzig, 1890) 


OROSIUS 69 


gives a comprehensive and condensed sketch of the chief 
interests and questions connected with the study of Oro- 
sius. Philological aspects are treated by GruBitz: Emen- 
dationes Orosianae ex cod. Portensi aliusque fontibus 
ductae (Leipzig, 1836); G. Freih. v. Beck: Diss. de Oro- 
sii font. et autoritate etc. (Gotha, 1834); C. v. PAUCKER: 
die Latinitaet des Orosius (Berlin, 1883); Karl PetscH: 
Zu Orosius in the Neue Jahrbuch philol-pedag., cxlv 
(1892), 219-24. 

The relations of the Histories to German history are 
dealt with especially by R. PatuMan: Geschichte der 
Voelkerwanderung, II, 435 ff. (Weimar, 1864); Karl 
MUELLENHOFF: Deutsche Alierthumskunde, III, 228 ff 
(Berlin, 1892); WATTENBACH: Deutschlands Geschichts- 
quellen, 80 (6th ed., Stuttgart, 1893); C. J. H. Haves: 
An Introduction to the Sources relating to the German 
Invasions (New York, 1909). 

The most celebrated translation of Orosius is the para- 
phrase of the Histories by Alfred the Great, the more 
recent texts of which are those by the Early English Text 
Society, 1883, and by Sweet, (Oxford, 1885); G. F. 
BROWNE (op. cit., 1920) and J. BoswortH (op. cit., 
1859), contain texts, translations, and accounts of Oro- 
sius, his views and influences; also B. THoRPE (Bohn 
Library, London, 1859). A translation of Orosius is 
planned for the series, Records of Civilization, edited by 
SHOTWELL (New York, 1915 ff.) in connection with which 
C. J. OGDEN is mentioned in PaEtow’s Guide, p. 
341. 

Of the 200 MSS. of the Histories, Pottuast lists about 
25 of the most important, at the Vatican, Paris, Chartres, 
Boulogne, Montpellier, Valenciennes, St. Omer, Brussels, 
Utrecht, Bourges, Breslau, Cologne, Florence, Milan and 
elsewhere. PoTTHasT mentions 23 printed publications 
of the Histories from 1471 (SCHUZLER) to 1650 (VoR- 
BURG); since then the most important have been HAvER- 
cAMP (London, 1738, 1767, republished by Migne in PL. 


7° CHURCH HISTORIANS 


with Bivarius’ notes; reédited with notes also by THORU- 
NUS in 1857 and 1877). 

The increase of interest in the “ history of history ” 
has given a fresh importance to Orosius as the pioneer of 
universal history. From Buedinger’s article (Ueber Dar- 
stellungen der Allgemeinen Geschichte besonders des Mit- 
telalters) in 1862, to J. T. SHOTWELL’s Introduction to 
the History of History (New York, 1922), there has 
been repeated stress placed on the importance of 
the Augustinian historical synthesis. Benedetto CRocE 
clearly recognizes that in Augustine-Orosius for the first 
time history is conceived in terms of progress. Actual 
progress in historiography, however, seems to be meas- 
ured by Eduard Furter by distance from the provi- 
dential view of history (Croce: Theory and History of 
Historiography, trans. by Douglas Ainslie, New York, 
1921; FurETER: Histoire de Vhistoriographie moderne, 
Paris, 1914). More discerning is Moritz RiTTER, in his 
Die christliche mittelalterliche Geschichte, in the His- 
torische Zeitschrift, for 1911, embodied in Die Entwick- 
lung der Geschichtswissenschaft etc. (Munich and Berlin, 


I9IQ). 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE (672-735) 


Rev. Francis S. BETTEN, S.J. 
The John Carroll University, Cleveland 


N a.D. 596 the great nation of the Franks began 
to enter the fold of the Catholic Church. A 
little more than fifty years later we find St. 

Gregory of Tours busy writing that nation’s history. 
When St. Gregory died in 594, the conversion of 
the Anglo-Saxons, the Teutonic invaders of Britain, 
was about to begin. In 597, St. Augustine, sent by 
Pope St. Gregory I, the Great, landed on the isle of 
Tanet in the kingdom of Kent. But the Christian- 
ization of the Anglo-Saxons was attended by much 
greater difficulties than had been that of the Franks. 
The Franks had practically only one ruler, and with 
his baptism by St. Remigius the work was almost 
done. Moreover, these new Christians simply joined 
the existing ecclesiastical units of Gaul. But the 
Anglo-Saxons had seven kingdoms and seven kings, 
and each ruler had to be won over individually. Nor 
could the neophytes join dioceses or parishes al- 
ready formed; the very system of an ecclesiastical 
organization was to be created. 

This process of conversion and organization took 
about eighty years. It was practically finished, when 
the subject of our biography, St. Bede the Vener- 
able, was born, in 672. He was a native of the king- 

71 


72 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


dom of Northumbria, and possibly his parents, cer- 
tainly his grandparents, had been converted from 
paganism and baptized in an advanced age. When 
_ seven years old the child was entrusted to the abbot 
St. Benedict Biscop, who had just established the 
monastery of Wearmouth. To this abbey the founder 
later on added the monastery of Jarrow, and trans- 
ferred there with a number of monks, also our young 
Bede. Both monasteries were considered as one, al- 
though St. Benedict Biscop put Jarrow under the 
special care of St. Ceolfrid. It was to this prudent 
and saintly superior that Bede owed his education. 
Of his boyhood we hear next to nothing. But Wear- 
mouth-Jarrow must have been an abode not only 
of sanctity and religious regularity, but also of solid 
study, where the youthful inmates were schooled 
by expert masters in all the branches of secular as 
well as of sacred knowledge. When nineteen years 
old, St. Bede was ordained deacon. He became priest 
at thirty, then the canonical age. 

There is little to tell about St. Bede’s life beside 
his activity as a writer. He spent all his days — he 
died when sixty-two —vwithin the precincts of his 
monastery. From one of his letters it appears that 
he visited King Wictred of Kent. Shortly before his 
death he traveled to York, no great distance from 
Jarrow, for a scientific conference with his pupil 
Egbert, the bishop of that city. It is also probable 
that he went to Lindisfarne, the famous monastery 
founded by St. Aidan, in order to gather material 
for his life of St. Cuthbert. These are the few in- 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 73 


terruptions of a life which may seem monotonous to 
us moderns, but which was not so to him. St. Bede 
was heart and soul a monk, penetrated with a firm 
conviction of the sublimity of these exercises to 
which he and his devoted brethren gave so consid- 
erable a part of their time. 

He sums up his life in a few inimitable lines. 
Having been born on the territory of the monastery, 
“I was given at seven years of age to be educated 
by the most reverend Abbot Benedict, and after- 
wards by Ceolfrid; and spending all the remaining 
time of my life in that monastery, I wholly applied 
myself to the study of Scripture, and amidst the 
observance of regular discipline and the daily care 
of singing in the church, I always took delight in 
learning, teaching, and writing. ... For the use 
of me and mine, I made it my business to compile 
out of the writings of the venerable Fathers, and to 
interpret and explain according to their meaning, 
the following pieces.” Then he gives a list of the 
works he had finished when fifty-nine years of age. 
Four more years were granted to him, during which 
he faithfully continued the same manner of life and 
labor. Very early it seems he became popularly 
known as “the Venerable,” but it is impossible to 
give a Satisfactory account of the origin of this 
epithet. 

Few lives have been spent so usefully for the 
Church and mankind as that of St. Bede. The pro- 
ductions of his indefatigable pen fill six volumes of 
Migne’s Latin Patrology. He was an encyclopedic 


74 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


writer, that is, he tried to embrace all human knowl- 
edge as far as it had been developed down to his 
own time in the compass of his works. His chief 
attention was given to the Bible. His commentaries 
on the Book of Books make up something like four- 
fifths of his works. He also wrote much on secular 
matters. His writings on mathematical geography 
and the manner of reckoning the years, months and 
days, are numerous, though not extensive. 

In all his writings he almost exclusively endeav- 
ored to garner the principal and most useful doc- 
trine of the Fathers of the Church, as also of the 
great secular authors of classic antiquity. However, 
he follows his own original method in representing 
what he has judiciously gleaned from his authori- 
ties. As regards geography, he stands entirely upon 
the ground of Pliny and St. Isidore. 

He is well acquainted with the sphericity of the 
earth, and with the way of interpreting the move- 
ments of the heavenly bodies as set forth by the 
Ptolemaic system. His booklets, De Ratione Tem- 
porum and De Tempore, owe their origin in large 
part to his desire to teach the correct way of reck- 
oning the date of Easter, and incidentally to justify 
the Roman method which had dislodged the Celtic 
computation in the churches of Anglo-Saxon Britain. 

His explanations of the Bible are composed of 
sentences and statements of the Fathers. These, 
however, he repeats only according to sense with- 
out reproducing them literally. Like all the other 
teachers of the monastic and cathedral schools of 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 75 


his country, he was extremely careful to put forth 
a truly correct Catholic doctrine. Hence he never 
deviates from the path trodden by the great men 
who had gone before him. It was the best thing to 
do, both for himself and for his countrymen. Their 
land had hardly been converted, and they were wise 
and humble enough to see that, novices as they were, 
they could not think of opening new vistas and start- 
ing original investigations in the field. 

By these unassuming and yet laborious efforts, 
St. Bede like St. Isidore, though in a less degree, 
became one of the connecting links between ancient 
lore, secular as well as ecclesiastical, and medieval 
times. Later ages were right in looking back to him 
with gratitude, and in making extensive use of the 
treasures he had accumulated in his works. 

Although we cannot here devote much time to 
the appreciation of his Biblical studies, we must 
duly emphasize the fact that his punctiliousness, far 
from detracting from his capacity as an historian, 
rather recommends him. He will show the same care 
and circumspection when he has to make historical 
statements. He will assert nothing without having 
proof of it. One of his smaller works in particular 
fills us with confidence in his historical methods. 
He had compiled an explanation of the Acts of the 
Apostles. But further study showed him that his 
comments could have been much better, had he paid 
more attention to the Greek text. So he issued a 
little volume in which he points to a number of 
texts in which either the Greek article, or the gender 


76 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


endings, or the more distinctive formation of the 
case endings of the Greek language, throw a clearer 
light upon the Latin text and show the meaning of 
the sacred writer more definitely. Similar remarks, 
referring to different Latin translations, are to be 
found here and there in other of his commentaries. 

In his scientific books, too, while mainly endeav- 
oring to put at the disposal of the reader the knowl- 
edge of former ages, he corrects, for instance, the 
misstatements of his Roman authorities concerning 
the ocean tides, of which they, living as they did on 
the Mediterranean Sea, could not have so clear an 
idea as one who knew from experience the propor- 
tions which the tides assume on the coasts of the 
British Isles. 

St. Bede was essentially a textbook writer. He 
summarized, extracted, boiled down, or expanded, 
the information furnished him by the older authors, 
with an eye to making it more accessible and in- 
telligible for his readers or rather students.’ He 
could not omit grammar, Latin grammar of course, 
understanding the term in the wide sense it had at 
his time, as including the precepts of style in gen- 
eral. We have three books by him of this category: 
De Orthographia, a dictionary of correct Latin spell- 
ing; De Tropis, a treatise of metaphors and their 
use; and De Arte Metrica, on the art of poetry. 


1 St. Bede anticipated the advice given eleven hundred years 
later by Pope Leo XIII concerning history. ‘‘ After the produc- 
tion of real learned books, which will necessarily be voluminous 
and clad in professional language, it remains to popularize their 
contents by issuing summaries and school books, and other pub- 
lications which will appeal to a wider public.” 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 77 


But in the present paper we must devote our at- 
tention chiefly to St. Bede’s historical works. Let 
us listen to his own enumeration of them: 


A book on the life and passion of St. Felix I rendered 
in prose form from one existing in verse by Paulinus. 
A book on the life and passion of St. Anastasius which 
had been badly translated from the Greek into Latin, 
and still worse improved by some ignorant person, I 
corrected to the best of my knowledge as the sense re- 
quired. I also composed, first in meter and then in prose, 
the life of the holy monk and Bishop Cuthbert. I wrote 
the history of the abbots of this our monastery, in which 
I rejoice to serve the Divine Goodness, namely, of 
Benedict (Biscop), Ceolfrid and Huetbert; and then the 
Ecclesiastical History of our Island and Nation, in five 
books, finally a Martyrology of the feast days of the 
holy martyrs, in which I tried with great care to set 
down not only on what day the various saints conquered 
the world, but also by what kind of combat and under 
what judge. 


To this list drawn up by him in 731, we must 
add the remarkable letter to Egbert, written three 
or four years later, when the indefatigable author 
already suffered from the sickness which in 735 
ended his most useful and saintly life. 

As it appears, a large number of these works, 
though small in size, are biographical in character. 
His one strictly historical work is the Historia 
Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, which, to use a busi- 
ness term, would make a dollar book. Concerning 
most of these works we must be satisfied with the 
description the venerable author gives of them in 


78 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


his own words. Anent his Martyrology, we may add, 
that, although based upon personal investigations, 
it no doubt also embodies the result of the labors of 
those who before his time had composed similar lists 
of Saints. Nevertheless, connoisseurs assure us that, 
as a whole, it was an original production. On ac- 
count of its excellent qualities other authors took 
hold of it, and enlarged and altered it to such a de- 
gree, that nowadays it is impossible to tell which 
parts are Bede’s and which are inserted by others. 
There is no doubt, however, that it exercised its 
influence upon similar works of the centuries that 
followed until under Pope Gregory XIII (1572- 
1585) the official Roman Martyrology was compiled 
by Cardinals Sirleto and Baronius.? 

The work to which St. Bede chiefly owes his well- 
deserved fame as an historian is the Church History 
of the Anglo-Saxons. It begins with a description 
of the two great islands of the British archipelago, 
Britannia and Hibernia, and a few notes concern- 
ing their Celtic inhabitants. The southern part of 
Britannia, where the Britons lived, was subjugated 
by the Romans, became Christianized, and soon had 
its ecclesiastical hierarchy. At times this part of the 
Church was threatened by Pelagianism, Pelagius 
being a native of the country. But taken all in all, 
their doctrine remained uncontaminated. Then fol- 
lowed the terrible times of the invasions of the 
pagan Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, whose progress, 
though at times interrupted and retarded, continued 


2 Cf. Kirchenlexicon, s. v. Acta Sanctorum. 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 79 


for a century and a half. There resulted the destruc- 
tion or expulsion or enslavement of the natives, and 
the disappearance of Christianity in the whole east- 
ern and central parts of the island where the bar- 
barous invaders had settled. In 597 St. Augustine, 
sent by Pope St. Gregory I, the Great, began the 
Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons. The marriage 
of King Ethelbert of Kent with the Catholic princess 
Bertha of the Merovingian royal family of the 
Franks, seemed to offer an opportunity. Monastic 
life was to be a chief means for establishing the new 
religion, and the great Pope planned a hierarchy on 
almost the same lines on which it was eventually 
shaped long after his death. 

St. Augustine had an interview with the bishops 
of the Christian Britons in the western section of 
the island, and tried both to gain their codperation 
in his missionary work among the Anglo-Saxons, 
and bring them into closer union with the Roman 
Pontiff. The Britons flatly refused to do anything 
for the conversion of their hereditary foes, the 
Anglo-Saxons, nor would they recognize St. Augus- 
tine as the Holy Father’s representative. It was a 
momentous decision. So far the barrier erected by 
the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms east of them, and the 
disturbances on the continent had isolated them, as 
it were, from the body of the Church. Now when 
the Church extended her hand to them, they made 
this isolation voluntary. On the continent the con- 
version of the Teutonic invaders by the old inhabit- 
ants had been completed, or at least auspiciously 


80 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


begun. The Britons preferred to persist in their 
national exclusiveness and narrow hatred of every- 
thing Anglo-Saxon. Even later on they made no dif- 
ference between baptized and pagan Saxons, and 
their bishops refused to eat in the same house with 
Anglo-Saxon bishops. How different would have been 
the history of the next. two centuries had they lis- 
tened to the voice of Christian charity and to the 
_ Invitation of the Supreme Shepherd at Rome. 

The kingdom of Kent, however, became Catholic, 
and Christianity was successfully introduced in the 
neighboring realms. In 625 the marriage of King 
Edwin of Northumbria with the Kentish princess 
Eadberga opened the way for Christianity into the 
large northern kingdom. St. Paulinus, as first Bishop 
of York, baptized the royal family and a large num- 
ber of the people. But the attack of the Christian 
King Cadwalla of the Britons, an ally of Penda, 
the pagan king of Mercia, besides causing great 
devastation and destruction of life, also induced 
very many of the newly baptized Christians to re- 
turn to paganism. The result was a two years’ in- 
terruption of the work of evangelizing, during which 
St. Paulinus with some of his companions returned 
to the South. But the new king of Northumbria, 
St. Oswald, who had made the acquaintance of the 
Irish monks of Iona, was no sooner firmly seated 
on the throne, than he requested the monks to send 
some of their number as missionaries to his king- 
dom. They sent St. Aidan as leader of a band of 
zealous men. St. Aidan founded an abbey on the 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE SI 


island of Lindisfarne, and made it a centre of new 
and vigorous apostolic effort. In Northumbria they 
completed the work of St. Paulinus which had been 
partly destroyed by the two years of devastation 
and confusion. The large kingdom of Mercia owes 
its conversion entirely to them, and the same may 
be said of East Anglia. The other kingdoms, too, 
with the exception of Kent and Sussex, felt their 
influence more or less strongly. St. Bede grows very 
eloquent in sounding the praises of these mission- 
aries, who made up for the hostile attitude of the 
Britons. 

It was very unfortunate that with these zealous 
men an element of discord came into the new 
Church. Cut off from actual communication with 
Rome by the troubles of the Migration of Nations, 
which upset all the conditions on the continent, and 
by the barrier of pagan Saxon states, which rose on 
the east and south of Britain, the Island Celts had 
adhered to a reckoning of the date of Easter which 
the whole Church had meanwhile abandoned. The 
Catholic world, with Rome at the head, followed 
another method. Southern Ireland had indeed 
adopted this Roman Easter as early as 631. But the 
north of the country as well as all the Irish mis- 
sionaries in Scotland, headed by the great abbey at 
Iona, retained the Celtic reckoning, and St. Aidan 
and his companions and successors still adhered to 
it. It happened consequently, that while those con- 
verted by the Roman and other continental mission- 
aries were celebrating Easter, those converted by 


82 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the Irish were still in Lent, or the opposite. In 664 
the king of Northumbria, Oswy, in whose own 
family the matter had become a burning question, 
had it discussed by learned men at Whitby, and de- 
cided that in his kingdom the Roman Easter was to 
be followed. His example drew with it all the other 
rulers and places of the Anglo-Saxon world, as far 
as a change was needed. 

It was the only correct thing to do. It brought 
unity to the Anglo-Saxon Church, and prevented the 
confusion from assuming larger and still more 
threatening proportions. Although the difference was 
only of disciplinary character and did not touch 
dogma, nobody can tell to what consequences it 
might have led. 

But the unity was dearly bought. For while the 
Anglo-Saxon clergy and many of the Irish submitted 
obediently to a clearly formulated and well-known 
regulation of Canon Law, Abbot-Bishop Colman of 
Lindisfarne, with a large number of his monks, re- 
fused to conform, and withdrew to the North, where 
at Iona the Celtic method was still kept up. With 
this the coming of Irish workers from those regions 
ceased. 

This was a hard blow to the Church. St. Bede’s 
feelings were evidently divided, when he wrote down 
the report of this event, which had taken place some 
nine years before his birth. On the one hand he 
whole-heartedly welcomed the achievement of com- 
plete Catholic unity and rejoiced over the victory 
of the Roman Easter, though he never lost his even 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 83 


historical temper. On the other hand, however, he 
greatly admired the virtue and ability of those who 
now left for good the country which was so deeply 
indebted to them, and he did not fail to give them 
a very sympathetic farewell. 

Another outstanding event in the history of the 
Anglo-Saxon Church was the coming, in 669, only 
five years after the conference of Whitby, of St. 
Theodore, sent by Pope St. Vitalian. St. Theodore 
was the first real Archbishop of Canterbury (669— 
690). He ruled the new-born Church with kindness 
and firmness, visiting all its parts, assembling the 
bishops in canonical councils, circumscribing the 
dioceses more accurately, inaugurating and inspiring 
the establishment of new schools, and in every way 
giving new vigor to Christian life in all classes of 
the people. With the activity of St. Theodore the 
missionary period of the Anglo-Saxon Church came 
to an end. During his administration the kingdom 
of Sussex, the only one not yet converted, came into 
the fold by the efforts of the Northumbrian St. 
Wilfrid. True, not even at St. Theodore’s death was 
every Anglo-Saxon actually baptized. But the coun- 
try was now completely organized, and the conver- 
sion of each individual was only a question of time 
and would be accomplished through the agencies 
already established. Taken as a whole, the Anglo- 
Saxon Church was a full-fledged member of the 
Catholic world. 

Although each of the five books of Bede’s Eccle- 
stastical History treats of a great variety of sub- 


84 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


jects, the prominent ecclesiastical fact in the first 
book is the coming of St. Augustine; that of the 
second book the appearance on the scene of the 
Irish monks with the progress of Christianization 
through the labors of both the Roman and the Irish 
missionaries; the third book concludes with the 
settling of the Easter question by the conference of 
Whitby; the fourth is devoted to the work and times 
of St. Theodore. When reading the fifth book one 
feels that the age of storm and stress is over. The 
author devotes much more space to the biographical 
notes on the lives of saints as well as to the reports 
of miraculous events. He recounts the efforts of 
Anglo-Saxon missionaries in foreign countries. 
Though always keeping to his strictly historical 
style, the author cannot conceal the joy it gives him 
to narrate the acceptance of the Roman Easter by 
a great part of the clergy in northern Ireland, by 
the Picts, by many of the Britons, and finally even 
in the very citadel of Celtic usages, the island mon- 
astery of Iona. 

To say a few words on St. Bede as an historian: 
he evidently was a truly patriotic Anglo-Saxon, who 
ardently loved his country and his nation. But this 
never betrayed him into forgetting the historian’s 
duty of telling the truth, the whole truth and noth- 
ing but the truth. Where the progress of events de- 
mands it, he tells of the crimes of his countrymen, 
as well as of their virtues. The Irish missionaries 
he treats almost with distinction, and never omits 
stating their direct or indirect influence upon the 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 85 


interests of the Church. He distinguishes clearly be- 
tween facts and rumors. The beautiful story of St. 
Gregory and the Anglo-Saxon slaves in the Roman 
market he expressly introduces as an opinion. In 
his dedicatory letter to King Ceolwulf of Northum- 
bria, who had with great interest watched the prog- 
ress of the work, and even read what we should now 
call the proof-sheets, the author, almost like a mod- 
ern historian, gives an account of the sources on 
which he had drawn. Concerning the times before 
St. Augustine he followed, he says, other Christian 
writers. He does not name them, but skilful com- 
mentators have been able to trace nearly all his 
statements, including the less important ones, to 
ancient publications. The years after St. Augustine’s 
coming were not far removed from his own; those 
were still living who had witnessed very many of 
the facts embodied in his work. He says, however, 
that he was careful in accepting oral testimony. He 
drew largely on documents found in monasteries and 
elsewhere. The monks of Lastingaeu furnished in- 
formation as to the conversion of Mercia, and Abbot 
Esi about the re-Christianization of East-Anglia; 
Bishop St. Daniel about Wessex, the Isle of Wight, 
and neighboring parts. But his most active helpers 
were Abbot Albinus of Canterbury and one of his 
monks, Nothelm, both of whom had been disciples 
of Sts. Theodore and Hadrian. Both these men went 
to great lengths to assist him. They not only inves- 
tigated the archives of Canterbury and other places, 
but continued their searches when in Rome. Once 


86 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Nothelm made the trip to Northumbria to bring to 
the writer in person documents and oral informa- 
tion. Concerning Northumbria, St. Bede was of 
course best situated. The archives gave him their 
treasures, the monks, the laity, the bishops and 
kings, communicated to him their knowledge of 
former days. The cooperation thus yielded to St. 
Bede, enabled him, among other things, to preserve 
for us so large a number of valuable papal and other 
documents, which but for him would have been lost 
long ago. 

A very peculiar feature of St. Bede’s Ecclesiasti- 
cal History is the very large number of biographies 
of saints or saintly persons which are embodied in 
the text. They are introduced at some moment when 
these persons appear for the first time, or when they 
become more than ordinarily prominent, but chiefly 
when their death is reported. Sometimes they oc- 
cupy but a few paragraphs, at other times they 
extend over several pages. Miracles play a rather 
extensive part in them, but this was according to 
the spirit and the views of the times. The author 
reports them only on good testimony, and although 
he styles them miracles, he evidently does not pre- 
tend to assert their truly supernatural character. 
He would be the last to object, if in a process of 
canonization some or even many of them were not 
accepted as genuine by the Roman Congregation of 
Rites. The insertion of these biographical notices is 
in accordance with his program. History, he tells us 
in the Introductory Letter, is to deter the reader 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 87 


from the bad and blameworthy of which he reads, 
and to stir him up to the zealous imitation of the 
good. Owing to these numerous lives of holy per- 
sons, the reading of St. Bede’s history unfolds be- 
fore us the picture of a country in which a truly 
Christian life was the rule. No doubt a nation, and 
so small a nation at that, which was able to produce 
such a galaxy of saintly men and women during so 
short a period has reason to feel proud. But on the 
other hand, the dark spots in the beautiful pictures 
are by no means glossed over or explained away, 
though the author never indulges in bloodcurdling 
descriptions of misdeeds. Only the edifying traits 
and facts enjoy the privilege of being represented 
in extenso. We see the kings, not only like Clovis 
the Frank, burn what they had adored and adore 
what they had burned, but no less than twenty-six 
kings and other personages of royal lineage ex- 
change the pomp of the court for the poverty and 
menial labors of the cloister. The number of 
monks in many monasteries ran well up into the 
hundreds. 

Thus, while strictly historical, as historical as 
the most honest efforts and the most painstaking 
labor could make it, the Ecclesiastical History is a 
genuine Erbauungsbuch, a book of religious edifica- 
tion and encouragement for the children of St. 
Bede’s race and for all that peruse its pages. 

To some perhaps the almost countless proper 
names which are scattered liberally through the 
whole narrative may seem bewildering. But besides 


88 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


testifying to the minuteness of the author’s re- 
searches they were what many readers desired. 
These names were not unknown. They had been 
heard occasionally, some perhaps frequently. By 
putting them in the right setting, by showing the 
connection of these persons with the whole current 
of events and disclosing the causes and effects of 
their deeds and misdeeds, the author clarified con- 
fused ideas and joined together into a coherent sys- 
tem whatever fragmentary knowledge existed in the 
minds of his readers. It is by means of these names 
that the succession of bishops of various sees and 
the branching out of royal families can be recon- 
structed. 

Next in merit after St. Bede’s Ecclesiastical His- 
tory, though only a pamphlet in size, is the Vita 
Beatorum Benedicti, Ceolfridi, Eosterwini, Sigfridi, 
atque Hwaetberhti, commonly referred to as the 
History of the Abbots. These were the first that 
ruled, though in different capacities, the twin mon- 
astery of Wearmouth-Jarrow, the place of the la- 
bors of St. Bede. Much of what he wrote in this 
booklet the author knew from personal observation, 
or by information obtained orally from older monks. 
But much is derived from smaller written sources 
which existed before him, though strange to say the 
author takes no pains even to refer to his sources. 
Probably all these particulars were too well known 
to the inmates of Wearmouth-Jarrow, for whom he 
wrote in the first place. One of these written sources 
is preserved to us, and was the work of an anony- 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 89 


mous monk of the same monastery. At first sight it 
may look somewhat similar, especially as it is also 
known among historians as History of the Abbots. 
But St. Bede proceeds along different lines. 

As was already stated, the founder of the twin- 
abbey was St. Benedict Biscop, who, however, for 
a more efficient administration soon appointed St. 
Ceolfrid Abbot of Jarrow, and a little later Eoster- 
win Abbot of Wearmouth, retaining all the time a 
sort of superintendence of both institutions. Eoster- 
win died after four years, when St. Benedict hap- 
pened to be absent on one of his six visits to Rome. 
The monks of Wearmouth therefore, with the co- 
operation of Abbot Ceolfrid of Jarrow, elected Sig- 
frid Abbot, which election Benedict cheerfully rati- 
fied after his return. But both Sigfrid and Benedict 
Biscop died some three years later, leaving Ceolfrid 
Abbot of both monasteries. Benedict Biscop, the 
founder, had ruled for sixteen years, and Ceolfrid 
held the dignity after his death for thirty-five. 
These are therefore the first two real abbots of the 
institution; the makers of its greatness. Now the 
anonymous writer of the older life makes it a biog- 
raphy of St. Ceolfrid, and brings in the lives of the 
other three, including the founder, only briefly and 
by way of further explanation. He calls his booklet 
expressly Vita Sanctissimi Ceolfridi Abbatis. 

St. Bede on the contrary begins with the life and 
achievements of the founder, upon which he enlarges 
greatly. Eosterwin and Sigfrid are naturally treated 
much more briefly, but get their due share of con- 


go CHURCH HISTORIANS 


sideration and praise. Ceolfrid’s position and long 
administration again requires more space. This man- 
ner of proceeding explains why St. Bede condenses 
the older life of Ceolfrid, and omits many of its 
details, although he brings in some items not men- 
tioned by the anonymous writer. The result is a 
publication of modest size, all the parts of which 
are well proportioned, and which, for its literary 
qualities, and above all for its historical perfection, 
may deservedly be called a gem of historic litera- 
ture. We wish indeed that St. Bede had told us more 
of the domestic life of the inmates of these two in- 
stitutions. How grateful should we be for a simple 
description of their daily order, or of the celebration 
of some great ecclesiastical festival, or reception of 
new members. But those for whom the saintly 
author wrote in the first place, looked upon all this 
as ordinary; as something of which they needed 
not to be reminded. Unquestionably few monastic 
institutions of ancient date possess so authentic and 
attractive an account of their origin and the first 
decades of their existence, an account which is at 
the same time a precious contribution to the history 
and development of religious life in England and 
in the Church at large. 

After all St. Bede wrote Church history. Secular 
events, it is true, are introduced extensively, yet 
always with the purpose of showing how they either 
furthered the progress or retarded the work of 
religion and piety. He dwells at great length upon 
the lives of the saints. The unedifying, while not 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE gt 


omitted, is kept well in the background. The Letter 
to St. Egbert, Bishop of York, however, shows St. 
Bede from another side. This pious writer, this re- 
tired monk, had a keen eye for the evils of his time, 
and not only exposed them mercilessly, but also pro- 
posed means to counteract them. Though in the 
form of a letter and destined for one addressee, it 
is rightly numbered among St. Bede’s historical 
writings. Egbert had been his disciple and St. Bede 
speaks to him with a freedom which only such a 
relation can excuse. The teacher first gives some 
private admonitions to his former pupil. Then he 
pictures in a language not free from indignation, 
several failings, and is evidently glad to have a 
chance of airing his mind on the subject. There 
were bishops, let us hope not many, who exacted 
the usual tribute from every place in their diocese, 
even from those remote villages which had not seen 
the bishop for many years, nay, which had not even 
a priest to instruct them. Some bishoprics were evi- 
dently too large, and should, with the help of the 
king, have been split into several dioceses. To pro- 
vide the new episcopal sees with revenue, the bish- 
ops might be made abbots of some of the rich 
monasteries. 

There were nobles who in order to avoid the trib- 
ute due the king, would establish sham monasteries 
and become abbots of them, without caring in the 
least for monastic life. Thus, adds the author with 
the foresight of a statesman, even the country’s de- 
fensive power was being weakened, because these 


Q2 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


sham abbots were no longer bound to go to war, or 
furnish troops to the king. 

Such language one is not accustomed to find in 
Bede’s works. However, it is ‘his swan song. 
He wrote this letter less than a year before his 
death. 

Had he been in some highly responsible and in- 
fluential position, he would no doubt have made his 
mark in the life of his Anglo-Saxon world, either in 
Church or State. But such dignities were not in the 
divine plan of his life. He loved to be praying and 
studying, teaching and writing. We can hardly doubt 
that as monk and scholar, teacher and writer, he 
has done more for the kingdoms of the Anglo-Saxons 
and for the Church at large than he could have 
achieved in any other position. What a gap would 
there be in ecclesiastical literature if we had no 
Bede. What services to the education of later cen- 
turies would have been omitted had the schools 
not possessed his works. We need not go into more 
remote centuries. St. Bede had been Egbert’s in- 
structor. St. Egbert in turn established at York a 
famous school of learning with a still more famous 
library. One of the fruits of this institution was the 
great Alcuin, friend, adviser, and practically minis- 
ter of instruction, of Charlemagne, the man, who 
through the power and far-sightedness of his illus- 
trious pupil became one of the most prominent 
influences in the literary and scientific life of the 
Middle Ages. Thus in a twofold way, namely 
through his books and his school, did St. Bede be- 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 93 


come one of the most influential men, not only in 
England, but on the Continent also, and as far as 
ecclesiastical learning extends over the globe. 

It is not necessary to dwell on the eminent serv- 
ice St. Bede rendered to historical science by pro- 
ducing those excellent works which later writers, 
often unconsciously, have taken and are taking as 
their model; works from which they will ever de- 
rive encouragement in their vocation. 

One point must not be left unmentioned, namely, 
his eminent service to chronology. The Christian 
era, that is, the counting of the years from the 
Birth of Christ, had been devised nearly two hun- 
dred years before his time. But its adoption was 
very slow. With the Roman missionaries, St. Augus- 
tine and his companions, it is supposed to have been 
introduced in Britain, and some instances are 
quoted, not without misgivings as to their genuine- 
ness, however, which would show that it was used 
by King Ethelbert of Kent as early as 605 and by 
others on later occasions during the seventh cen- 
tury. Whatever authority these instances may have, 
it is certain that St. Bede, when writing his De 
Temporibus and De Temporum Ratione, supposes 
this reckoning to be generally known among the 
Anglo-Saxons. But the fact that he employed it 
throughout in his Ecclesiastical History helped 
greatly to make its hold upon the nation still more 
secure. From his time on it was an established ele- 
ment in the dating of charters. On the Continent, 
however, it was not known, at any rate not practiced, 


94 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


at this time. But through the spread of St. Bede’s 
books it gained admittance first in the Frankish 
Kingdom and Empire and thereby gradually came to 
be generally used. That his authority and example 
had a far-reaching influence on the spread of the 
‘“‘Christian Era” is unhesitatingly admitted by his- 
torians. | 

St. Bede writes an easy fluent Latin, which, with 
some few peculiarities, is a successful imitation of 
the language of the later classic period. His narra- 
tive runs on quietly, placidly, like a little brook, 
whose limpid waters hardly begin to foam when 
they run over the rocks. He simply relates the facts, 
and leaves it to the reader to feel and express the 
emotions which they may provoke. 

St. Bede is not only the sole source of the history 
of the Anglo-Saxon lands, but he is also the organ- 
izer of this history. It was a difficult task to arrange 
in one continued narrative the many bits of informa- 
tion which were submitted to him concerning a sub- 
ject which none as yet had attempted to embrace 
in one work. He had no predecessor in the field to 
point him the way; no one to furnish the outlines 
along which he could proceed. He had to draft the 
outlines himself. But he knew how to place himself 
upon a pinnacle so high that he was able to survey 
the whole of the Anglo-Saxon world; nay, his hori- 
zon was even wide enough to include also the prin- 
cipal events of the nations which surrounded that 
world and came into contact with it. The very fact 
that such a history was conceived and planned, 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 95 


throws favorable light upon the intellectuality of all 
the persons concerned, the author himself as well 
as those who suggested, encouraged, promoted and 
appreciated an enterprise of this kind. St. Bede’s 
work is a monumental proof of the elevating effect 
Christianity had had upon the minds of the Anglo- 
Saxons. 

His Church History is one of several works which 
profess to be histories of Germanic races. Two of 
these were produced in the sixth century. Cassio- 
dorus, who died about 578 in Italy, wrote a History 
of the Goths, which unfortunately has come to us 
only in a rather inferior summary made by Jordanis. 
His contemporary, St. Gregory of Tours, who went 
to his reward seventeen years later, is the author of 
the ten books of the History of the Franks. This 
work perhaps was not without influence in encour- 
aging Bede to resolve upon composing a history of 
his own Anglo-Saxons. But he surpasses St. Gregory 
in the succinctness of his plan. He does not begin 
like Gregory with the creation of the world, but with 
the land which was the scene of the events he was 
going to record; nor does he draw into the compass 
of his work any but those nations which were in im- 
mediate contact with his own. Critics moreover agree 
that he commands a more genuinely historical style 
and shows greater skill in handling his material. 
During St. Bede’s later years there was born in 
Northern Italy the Lombard Paul Warnefried, after- 
wards called the Deacon, a Benedictine monk, more 
brilliantly gifted than Bede, but directing his atten- 


96 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


tion more to the events of a secular nature. To him 
we owe a History of the Lombards. But he too inter- 
rupts his narrative by digressions into the history 
of other lands, especially that of the Franks. 

Here again we should not omit noticing the effect 
of the Church’s educational methods. Cassiodorus, 
the historian of the Ostrogoths, was no Goth him- 
self, but the scion of an old Roman family. St. 
Gregory, the author of the History of the Franks, 
was no Frank, but a Gallo-Roman. These men lived 
in the sixth century. The seventh century passed, 
and the educational agencies of the Church, the 
bishops and the monks, kept faithfully at their 
task. The next national historians, St. Bede and 
Paul the Deacon, were sons of their own peoples, 
whose facts and fates they immortalized in their 
books. These nations had not sat in vain at the feet 
of their ecclesiastical teachers. 

In thus concluding our brief study on St. Bede, 
the historian, let us offer our congratulations to the 
English nation, and in particular to the English 
Catholics, for possessing so excellent an account of 
the origin and growth of their Church and its or- 
ganization, as also such precious notes even on their 
secular institutions. But we should extend our felici- 
tations to the Church at large, and even beyond it 
to the whole of mankind. St. Bede has enriched 
Catholic literature by contributions, such as few 
others have been able to offer. Although his Eccle- 
stastical History does not command the popularity 
his other books enjoy, the large number of manu- 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE Q7 


scripts of this history that have come down to our 
times, bears witness to the wide interest which it 
provoked in and out of England. His works form 
an essential part of historical lore, not only of the 
Catholic Church, but of the civilized world as well. 
We can only wish, though in vain, that we possessed 
similar accounts of the beginnings and vicissitudes 
of many other nations. 

A word for us Americans. St. Bede wrote his his- 
tory of the Anglo-Saxon Church before it was too 
late; before all the documents referring to these 
times had perished; before all those had died who 
could assist him by their word-of-mouth contribu- 
tions. We of America are not much farther removed 
from the beginnings of the Catholic Church in this 
country than he was from those of his. We should 
now write our history. A good beginning has been 
made. But we need more than one Bede. Our coun- 
try and our Church offer too great a variety of 
facts to be happily consolidated by any one man. 
God grant that St. Bede multiply himself in our 
midst. 

We have the same wish for the Church at large 
and for all mankind. God grant that we find men 
like him working in all the parts of the wide field 
of history; men who produce books equally truthful, 
equally useful; men of whom is true what no less 
an historian than Theodore Mommsen said of St. 
Bede the Venerable: “‘ He calls himself a verax his- 
toricus, a truth-loving historian, and he has a right 
to do so. Those who have followed him up will 


98 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


testify that few authors when representing facts 
have proceeded with the same degree of accurate- 
ness.” 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


There is no good medieval life of Bede. Apart from 
the two anonymous biographical accounts in the Vita 
quorundam Anglo-Saxonum, edited by J. A. GruEs (Lon- 
don, 1854), there is no worthy attempt before the work 
of Kart WERNER, Beda der Ehrwiirdige und seine Zeit 
(Vienna, 1875). This is the only serious life up to our 
time. RaAawnstuy, The Venerable Bede (Sunderland, 
1903) is a superficial sketch. BROWNE, The Venerable 
Bede: his Life and Writings (New York, 1919), is writ- 
ten from the Anglican viewpoint and is not free from his- 
torical inaccuracy. Numerous sketches appear in various 
dictionaries, as for example, Hunt in the Dictionary of 
National Biography, and THURSTON in the Catholic En- 
cyclopedia. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON BEDE AND HIS WRITINGS 


The classic edition of Bede’s works is that by CHARLES 
PrumMER, Venerabilis Baedae Historiam Ecclesiasticam 
Gentis Anglorum, Historiam, Epistolam ad Eggbertum, 
una cum Historia Abbatum Auctore Anonymo. Ad Fidem 
Codicum Manuscriptorum Denuo Recognovit, Commen- 
tario tam Critico quam Historico Instruxit Carolus Plum- 
mer, A.M., Colegit Corpiors Christi Socius et Capellanus 
Tomus Prior, Prolegomena et Textum Continens. Tomus 
Posterior, Commentarium et Indices Continens. Oxford, 
Clarendon Press, 1896. This is an admirable work. The 
text has been reconstructed with an incredible amount of 


ST. BEDE THE VENERABLE 99 


patience and labor. The commentary and notes have 
been composed with most loving care that does not forget 
the smallest detail, and with that far-sightedness which 
sees connections with numerous other literary produc- 
tions. If anyone wishes to make a study on some detailed 
topic of these works of Bede, let him first turn to Plum- 
mer. It will save him a great deal of useless trouble. 
WERNER gives a thorough appreciation of all of St. Bede’s 
works. Cf. also The Venerable Bede’s Ecclesiastical His- 
tory of England, also the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Lon- 
don, 1900); F. Ruutu, Chronologie des Mittelalters und 
der Neuzeit (Berlin, 1897); REGINALD PooLE, Medie- 
val Reckonings of Time (London, 1922); LincArp, The 
Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church (London, 1848). 

The best bibliography of Bede’s works and commen- 
taries thereon will be found in PLUMMER, op. cit., Vol. I. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS (1075-c. 1142) 


CHARLES WENDELL Davin, Pu.D. 
Bryn Mawr College, Bryn Mawr, Pa. 


SHERE are few historians of the twelfth cen- 
tury about whom and whose work we have 
such precise and satisfactory information 

aS we possess concerning Ordericus Vitalis and his 
vast Historia Ecclesiastica and other writings. Al- 
though unmentioned by other writers of the Middle 
Ages, he has left on record more facts concerning 
himself than many of his contemporaries have done. 
We know much of the school in which he was 
trained, the monastery in which he lived and worked, 
the sources of information which he had at his dis- 
posal. There is no reason to suppose that any of his 
important works have been lost; and, what is more 
surprising, they have very largely survived in orig- 
inal autograph manuscripts. His handwriting, even, 
has been made the subject of special study, and has 
been extensively reproduced in facsimile. All his 
known writings are in print, and his historical 
works (which are the only ones of much importance) 
are available in editions which are in themselves 
monuments of erudition. There is, in fact, almost 
nothing which a fresh study can add to what is al- 
ready known of the subject which has been assigned 
me in this symposium. 


100 


ORDERICUS VITALIS Ior 


Ordericus Vitalis was born on 16 February 
1075, and was baptized on the following Easter eve 
(4 April) in the village of Atcham on the Severn 
a few miles below Shrewsbury. Ordric, the priest 
who administered the sacrament, acted also as god- 
father and gave to the child his own name. Orderi- 
cus had two brothers, both younger than himself. 
One of them, named Benedict, became a monk at 
Shrewsbury; the other, named Everard, apparently 
remained a layman. Of his maternal ancestry we 
know nothing, although it has been confidently as- 
serted by a well-known modern writer, and it may 
be true, that his mother was an English woman.’ 
His father, Odelerius of Orleans (son of a certain 
Constantius, of whom nothing is known), was a 
priest who had gone to England as chaplain and 
trusted adviser to Roger of Montgomery, Earl of 
Shrewsbury, one of the great barons of the Norman 
Conquest. Odelerius was a man of considerable dis- 
tinction. His son describes him as a “ sapient clerk,”’ 
a man of talent, eloquence, and learning, and as- 
cribes to him the chief credit for the foundation of 
the monastery of Saint Peter and Saint Paul at 

1 For all the facts concerning the life of Ordericus Vitalis, see 
Delisle’s introduction to the Historia Ecclestastica, i, pp. xxxii ff. 
The important autobiographical passages of the Historia Eccle- 
siastica are li, pp. 220, 301-303, 311, 415-423, iv, pp. 272-273, 
V, PP. 133-137. 

2 E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman Conquest, 2nd ed., 
Oxford, 1870-76, iv, p. 494: “ The French clerk had married an 
English wife and was the father of at least three English-born 
sons.” This must be an inference from the fact that Ordericus 
Vitalis several times refers to himself as Angligena and that he 


maintained a certain loyalty to England throughout his life. Eng- 
lish was apparently his native tongue. Hist. Ecc., v, p. 135. 


102 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Shrewsbury. From his patron, Earl Roger, Odelerius 
had received an important estate outside the eastern 
gate of Shrewsbury, on which there was an ancient 
church of wood; and, while on a journey to Rome, 
he had taken a vow to replace this wooden structure 
with a more worthy edifice of stone. When he had 
returned to Shrewsbury and had actually begun the 
work, which must have far exceeded his limited re- 
sources, he succeeded in persuading Earl Roger, 
with the help of others, to take over the project; 
and so by cooperative effort the great Benedictine 
abbey of Shrewsbury arose. Odelerius gave to the 
enterprise not only his enthusiasm but practically 
all his worldly wealth. One of his sons, as already 
noted, was placed in the monastery; and after the 
death of Earl Roger, Odelerius himself entered the 
monastery and there ended his days.* 

When Ordericus reached the age of five, he was 
sent by his father to school in Shrewsbury to a 
priest named Siward—‘a noble and_ learned 
priest,” he tells us— from whom he gained the 
rudiments of a liberal education, including a knowl- 
edge of psalms and hymns; and presently he began 
“the first service of his clerkship,” presumably as 
a choir boy, in his father’s church at Shrewsbury. 
Thus five years were passed, until, in 1085, he 
reached the turning point from which the whole fu- 
ture course of his life was to flow. Odelerius had de- 
cided that his eldest son should enter the monastic 
life, but, fearing the distractions of close family ties, 


3 He is probably the “ Oilerius sacerdos” who figures among 
the early benefactors of Shrewsbury Abbey in the local founda- 
tion history. Monasticon Anglicanum, iii, pp. 518, 520. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 103 


he was unwilling that he should become a monk at 
Shrewsbury. In order that the renunciation on the 
part of both parent and child should be the more 
complete, Odelerius had determined to send him 
away to a far country; and so, providing him with 
thirty marks of silver for a gift to the society he 
was to enter, he committed him to a certain monk 
named Reginald, who conducted him over sea to the 
abbey of Saint-Evroul in the depths of the forest in 
Normandy. Father and son were never to meet 
again. Recalling the experience more than half a 
century later, Ordericus has described, in words 
which move us still, the painful parting scene — the 
tearful but determined father, the weeping but obedi- 
ent child, who dared not oppose a father’s wishes, the 
tearful relatives and friends. 

Arrived in Normandy, “ like Joseph in Egypt ” 
Ordericus heard a language which he knew not. 
Yet by the grace of God he met with a most cordial 
reception at the hands of the strangers who were 
soon to regard him as one of themselves. He was 
given the tonsure according to clerical rite and re- 
ceived into the monastic life at Saint-Evroul by 
Abbot Mainer on Sunday, 21 September 1085; and 
next day, since “ Ordric,” his English name, sounded 
harsh in the ears of the Normans, they changed it to 
“Vitalis,” the name of one of the companions of 
Saint Mauritius whose martyrdom they were then 
commemorating.* 

4 The exact dates of these events are really not certain. 
Ordericus Vitalis seems to speak of his reception, tonsure, and 


renaming as if they all came together on Sunday, 21 September; 
but Saint Mauritius’ day is 22 September. I have ventured to 


104 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


The rest of the life of Ordericus Vitalis was spent 
in the profound calm of religious devotion and 
scholarly labor which only the monastic life made 
possible in that age of feudal violence, and there 
are but few more facts to record about him. He 
was ordained subdeacon by Gilbert, bishop of Li- 
sieux, on 15 March 1091, deacon by Serlo, bishop 
of Séez, on 26 March 1093, and finally priest by 
Archbishop William of Rouen on 21 December 
1107. This last event must have been one of the 
most memorable of his career. He was ordered to 
Rouen for the occasion by his abbot, Roger du Sap, 
and there he joined with a company of some seven 
hundred men, including an abbot elect of Fécamp, 
who were simultaneously raised to one or another 
rank of the priesthood. The pomp and circumstance 
of the occasion moved him to commemorate it ,in 
verse. 

On some other occasions, also, we know that 
Ordericus Vitalis was permitted to go beyond the 
confines of his abbey. Twice, at least, he visited 
England: once when he spent five weeks at Croy- 
land abbey,’ making an abridgment of an obscure 
life of a little known saint; and again, when at 
Worcester he was able to examine the universal 
chronicle of Marianus Scotus in its continuation by 


remove the inconsistency by supposing that the renaming took 
place on Monday. By a slip Delisle has placed these events in 
October instead of September. Hist. Ecc., i, p. xxxiv. 

5 Croyland was then presided over by Geoffrey of Orleans, a 
former monk of Saint-Evroul. Delisle supposes the date to have 
been about 1115. Hist. Ecc., i, p. xxxvi. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 105 


Florence and John of Worcester.* On another oc- 
casion he was at Cambray and saw in the abbey of 
Saint-Sépulchre a copy of the chronicle of Sigebert 
of Gemblours. He was probably present at the 
Council of Rheims in October 1119; and he cer- 
tainly took part on 20 March 1132 in the great 
gathering at Cluny of more than twelve hundred 
monks of the Cluniac order with which his own 
house of Saint-Evroul was affiliated. These were 
not the only times when he went beyond the clois- 
ter,*> but such occasions must have been few. The 
life of Ordericus Vitalis was not spent upon the road 
or at the courts of princes. It was for the most part 
spent in the quiet seclusion of his abbey. It was 
there that he received the major portion of his edu- 
cation, there that his talent was formed, and there 
that he accomplished his prodigious work in the 
service of history. 


6 Hist. Ecc., ii, pp. 159-161. Ordericus Vitalis names John of 
Worcester as the continuator and makes no mention of Florence. 
Le Prévost (followed by Delisle) has proposed to correct him by 
substituting Florence for John. This seems hardly necessary. The 
work, which Ordericus describes in some detail, was clearly that of 
Florence; but Florence died in 1118, and the work was there- 
after carried on by John. If Ordericus visited Worcester after 
1118, as he presumably did, it would not be unnatural for him 
to refer to the work as John’s. The work of John of Worcester 
is now available in a satisfactory edition by J. R. H. Weaver (Ox- 
ford, 1908), who, however, seems not to know of this passage in 
Ordericus Vitalis. 

7 This is the opinion of Le Prévost and Delisle, based on the 
fullness and accuracy of the description which Ordericus Vitalis 
has given of the council. Hist. Ecc., i, p. xxxvi, iv, p. 372. 

8 He was in France in 1105. He was at Merlerault, in Nor- 
mandy, on the occasion of a severe storm on 9 August 1134, and 
next day he went to the nearby village of Planches in order to 
observe at first hand the destruction wrought by the lightning. 
Hist. Ecc., i, p. Xxxvi. 


106 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


The monastery of Saint-Evroul was in many re- 
spects an excellent school for the work which lay 
before him. As a centre of intellectual life it did 
not, of course, compare with the famous school 
which Lanfranc and Anselm had created at Bec— 
a monastery, says Ordericus, in which ‘“ almost all 
the monks would seem to be philosophers, and flu- 
ent grammarians might profit from conversation 
with even the most unlearned among them.” ° Yet 
Saint-Evroul must certainly be counted among the 
most important centres of civilization in Normandy 
in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, and it is no- 
table for the variety of intellectual interests which 
it fostered. Theodoric, the first abbot after its re- 
foundation in 1050, was a skilful and active copyist 
of manuscripts. He brought with him from Jumiéges 
several disciples who were also skilled in the art of 
writing. And he proceeded at once to establish at 
Saint-Evroul a school of copyists, which, under the 
fostering care of himself and later abbots, remained 
active for many years, and enriched the abbey’s 
library with many precious volumes. Still other vol- 
umes were obtained elsewhere, and so the library 
grew into a very substantial collection. We are so 
fortunate as to possess a catalogue of this library, 
which was drawn up about the middle of the twelfth 
century, and shows us with some certainty the books 
which Ordericus Vitalis and his fellow workers had 
regularly at their disposal. It was such a library as 
we should expect. It was mainly filled with liturgi- 


® Hist. Ecc., ii, p. 246. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 107 


cal works which were needed in the services, the 
Holy Scriptures and commentaries thereon, writings 
of the fathers, and lives of the saints. It was prac- 
tically devoid of the classical literatures of Greece 
and Rome. There were a number of history books, 
such as those of Eusebius and Orosius, Bede and 
Paul the Deacon. There was a book of Hippocrates 
and there were volumes of Isidore of Seville On 
Synonyms and On the Nature of Things. The liter- 
ary achievements of the monks of Saint-Evroul 
were considerable, as Delisle has shown, though no 
one else produced a work in any way comparable 
with that of Ordericus Vitalis. The art of music 
was also much cultivated, as the numerous refer- 
ences to it by Ordericus testify. One of the monks 
of Saint-Evroul was a competent architect, who 
supervised the building of a new church for the com- 
munity. Another was a master of the difficult art of 
ornamenting precious books with gold and silver 
and precious stones. Still others were skilled in the 
art of illumination. And one of the abbots, Osbern, 
combined with remarkable literary gifts a talent 
for sculpture and perhaps also for work in metal. 
Finally, Saint-Evroul was in some degree a centre of 
interest in medicine. As noted above, the library con- 
tained a book of Hippocrates, and two notable phy- 
sicians were numbered among the monks."® 
Ordericus Vitalis made good use of the opportu- 
nities which his life at Saint-Evroul afforded. His 
fame as a historian has overshadowed his other 


10 For the intellectual life of Saint-Evroul, its library, etc., 
see Delisle’s introduction in Hist. Ecc., i, pp. iii ff 


108 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


achievements, but it must not be forgotten that he 
was a skilful copyist of manuscript as well as some- 
thing of a poet, and, if I am not mistaken, he was 
also something of a musician. 

The interest which Ordericus Vitalis took in the 
copying of manuscripts is proved by the full and 
precise information which he gives us concerning 
the school of copyists at Saint-Evroul and the work 
of copying which was carried on there. It is also 
well illustrated by the evident relish with which he 
records a favorite story which Abbot Theodoric 
used to tell when he wished to stimulate the indus- 
try of young novices in the art of writing. It is the 
story of a monk who in his lifetime had been guilty 
of many transgressions but who had copied a great 
volume of the Scriptures and who at the final judg- 
ment was spared because it was found on examina- 
tion that the number of letters in the volume which 
he had written exceeded by one the number of his 
sins.** But we do not have to depend upon such 
evidence as this for proof of the interest which 
Ordericus took in the art of the copyist. A consid- 
erable number of manuscripts written in his own 
hand has come down to us. These include three of 
the four volumes of the manuscript of the Historia 
Ecclesiastica and manuscripts of his other historical 
work and of some of his poems, as well as manu- 
scripts of a number of works of which he was only 
the copyist, not the author.” Taken together they 


11 Hist. Ecc., ii, pp. 49-50. 
_ 1% For extensive reproductions of these manuscripts in fac- 
simile, see Matériaux pour l’Edition de Guillaume de Jumiéges 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 10g 


compel us to recognize him as one of the most skil- 
ful and active copyists of his epoch. No one can 
look at a page of his manuscript without admira- 
tion. The characters are, as a rule, large, clear, and 
elegant. The writing is comparable with that of the 
very best professional scribes; ‘“‘and yet,” says 
Delisle, ‘‘ it has a character which is always pecul- 
iar and, so to say, individual, a character which 
makes it possible to distinguish it from the great 
mass of the writing of the period; numerous traits 
denote a hand which is steady and very experienced, 
which has been trained to a rigorous and constant 
system of letters and abbreviations, without arriving 
at the banal uniformity of much of the writing of 
the period, which makes it resemble something 
printed from type.” ** In short, the personality of 
Ordericus Vitalis is apparent even in his hand- 
writing. 

In some way, we know not how, Ordericus devel- 
oped a taste for profane literature, and Delisle has 
compiled a substantial list of pagan authors whom 
he cites.** But he never allowed his poetical impulse 
to tempt him into writing light verses in the pagan 
manner. Those who have taken the trouble to read 


préparée par Jules Lair, [Paris], 1910. The preface to this work, 
by Léopold Delisle, was reprinted in Bibliothéque de l’Ecole des 
Chartes, |xxi (1910), pp. 481-526. The references infra are to the 
reprint. For a description of the hand and of the autograph 
manuscripts of Ordericus Vitalis, see the foregoing preface, Bibl. 
de VEc. des Chartes, \xxi, pp. 481, 506. Cf. also Delisle, in An- 
nuaire-Bulletin de la Soc. de V Hist. de France, 1863, Part II, pp. 
1-3, and in Bibl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, xxxiv, pp. 267-276.: 

13 Jbid., xxi, p. 492. 

14 Hist. Ecc., i, pp. xxxviii-xxxix. 


IIO CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the versified epitaphs which he has scattered through 
the Historia Ecclesiastica, and of which he was 
manifestly very proud, will not, I imagine, be in- 
clined to admit that he had a poetical impulse in 
his nature. But he was the author of a number of 
other poetical compositions upon which our judg- 
ment may be more favorable. I do not insist upon 
the merits of a lament upon the abasement and des- 
olation of the church (Conquestus de Abieccione 
et Desolatione Sancte Det Ecclesie),’° about the 
authorship of which there is in fact some doubt, 
although the manuscript is wholly in the hand of 
Ordericus Vitalis and the sentiments are such as we 
would expect him to express. Nor do I insist upon 
the merits of another poem in similar vein which 
begins 


Mundi forma veterascit, evanescit gloria,'® 


about the authorship of which there can be no doubt. 
The manuscript is wholly in the hand of Ordericus 
Vitalis and bears the author’s own corrections; and 
Delisle has noted close parallels both in thought 
and language between this poem and certain pas- 
sages of the Historia Ecclesiastica. It is a violent 
satire upon the evil days in which the author lived 
and may well refer to the disorders which prevailed 
in Normandy under the weak rule of Robert Cur- 
those. Of a higher order are two other poems which 


seem designed for use in religious worship and 
15 Bibl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, xxi, pp. 505-506. 


16 Annuaire-Bulletin de la Soc. de VHist. de France, 1863, 
Part II, pp. 3-7; cf. Bibl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, \xxi, pp. 497-499. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS Itt 


which in their deep religious feeling reveal our 
author at his best.’’ The first is a prayer, of which 
the opening stanza is as follows: 


Summe pater, coeli rector, qui es sine tempore, 
Cui non est pietatis modus nec clementiae, 
Te personis celo trinum, unius substantiae. 


The second is a sort of litany in verse, which was 
pretty surely used in the service at Saint-Evroul, 
and which begins: 


O Maria, gloriosa angelorum domina, 
Maria stella, vincens cuncta claritate sidera, 
Virgo pulchra, virgo casta, me clementer adiuva."® 


The three poems which have just been described, 
that is the satire, the prayer, and the litany, stand 
together in a single autograph manuscript; and the 
first three verses of the satire are accompanied by a 
musical notation, which raises an interesting ques- 
tion as to the knowledge of music which Ordericus 
Vitalis possessed. We cannot, of course, assume that 
he was the composer of the music here recorded, 
though it would be no matter for surprise if he 
were, for we have other evidence that he was well 
versed in the musical art. It will be recalled that 
his musical education had begun at Shrewsbury 
when he reached the age of five. Delisle has col- 


17 Annuaire-Bulletin, pp. 7-13; cf. Bibl. de ’Ec. des Chartes, 
Ixxi, pp. 499-500. 

18 Still another poem, on Richard of IIchester, abbot of 
Saint-Evroul, may be by Ordericus Vitalis, but the attribution is 
doubtful. It is published by Delisle in Bzbl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, 
Xxxiv, pp. 273-282; cf. Hist. Ecc., i, p. xxvii. 


ii pan CHURCH HISTORIANS 


lected the numerous passages in which he has de- 
scribed the progress of music at Saint-Evroul.*® I 
will quote from one of them: “ The aforesaid monk 
[Witmund] was an accomplished musician as well 
as grammarian, of which he has left us evidence in 
the antiphons and responses which he composed, 
consisting of some delightful chants in the antiph- 
onary and troper. He completed the history of the 
life of Saint Evroul by adding nine antiphons and 
three responses. He composed four antiphons to the 
psalms at vespers, and added the three last for the 
second nocturn, with the fourth, eighth, and twelfth 
responses, and an antiphon at the canticles, and 
produced a most beautiful antiphon for the canticle 
at the gospel in the second vespers. The history of 
the life of Saint Evroul had already been composed 
by Arnulph, precentor of Chartres, a pupil of Bishop 
Fulbert, at the request of Abbot Robert, for the 
use of his monks, and it was first sung by two 
young monks, Hubert and Ralph, sent for that pur- 
pose by the bishop of Chartres. Afterwards Regi- 
nald the Bald composed the response ‘To the Glory 
of God,’ sung at vespers, with seven antiphons 
which still appear in the service books of the monks 
of Saint-Evroul. Roger du Sap, also, and other stu- 
dious brethren produced, with pious devotion, sev- 
eral hymns having the same holy father for their 
subject, and placed them in the library of the abbey 
for the use of their successors.” *° It seems evident 


19 Hist. Ecc., i, pp. Xxviii-xxx. 
20 Hist. Ecc., ii, pp. 95-96. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 113 


that the author of such a passage as this must have 
been a well-informed and practiced musician, if he 
was not himself an original composer. 

All the other accomplishments of Ordericus Vitalis 
are, of course, as nothing compared with his achieve- 
ments as a historian. And here it is to be noted that, 
whatever the other literary interests of the school in 
which he was trained, there was at Saint-Evroul no 
previous tradition of historical writing, and Orderi- 
cus had no local model to point the way and give 
him inspiration. 

His historical works consist of (1) a portion of 
the meagre annals of Saint-Evroul,** which is un- 
important and need not concern us further, (2) a 
group of interpolations in the Gesta Normannorum 
Ducum of William of Jumiéges, and (3) the volu- 
minous Historia Ecclesiastica, which has been well 
described as “ the chef-d’oeuvre of Norman histori- 
ography and the most important historical work 
written in France in the twelfth century.” *° 

It is only in recent years that it has become pos- 
sible to speak with any certainty concerning the in- 
terpolations of Ordericus Vitalis in the Gesta Nor- 
mannorum Ducum of William of Jumiéges. It has 
long been known that the work of William of Ju- 
miéges was several times revised and enlarged after 
its author’s death and that much of what passed for 
his work in medieval manuscripts and modern edi- 


aL Published as an appendix in Hist. Ecc., v, pp. 139-173. On 
Ordericus’ part in them see Delisle in Bibl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, 


Ixxi, p. 493. 
22 Haskins, Normans in European History, p. 180. 


114 CHURCH HISTORIANS. 


tions was really not his at all. In 1873 Léopold De- 
lisle recognized the hand of Ordericus Vitalis in the 
original manuscript of one of the most important of 
these revisions and thereby proved him to be its 
author. This manuscript was reproduced in facsimile 
in 1910; * and the publication in 1914 of a definitive 
edition of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum,”™ in all 
its parts, has finally made it possible to see precisely 
of what the work of Ordericus Vitalis consisted. As 
was to be expected, he made no great changes in the 
original text of William of Jumiéges. He confined 
himself almost wholly to interpolations, and these 
are of slight importance throughout the earlier and 
by far the greater portion of the work. They amount 
to but four or five pages in the whole of the first six 
books. But the seventh book is greatly enlarged, it 
is in fact more than doubled, so that we have here 
to deal with an important contribution to history. 
As sources Ordericus undoubtedly used William of 
Poitiers and the archives of Saint-Evroul and per- 
haps also some Norman family genealogies; but in 
the main he depended upon information gathered 
from oral report and tradition. Though there are 
constant references to later events, the work really 
closes with the Norman Conquest and cannot be 
regarded as a contemporary authority. This, how- 
ever, is not to condemn it as valueless. The author 
was drawing upon living sources which were even 


23 Matériaux pour Védition de Guillaume de Jumiéges préparée 
par Jules Lair. 


A 24 By Jean Marx on the basis of materials prepared by Jules 
air. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS Irs 


then passing away; and he already reveals the same 
insatiable curiosity about men and events, the same 
desire for full and intimate knowledge which char- 
acterize his later work and which enabled him to 
write the vivid narratives with which all readers 
of the Historia Ecclesiastica are familiar. The work 
is not without interest for the affairs of the great 
world —for the Norman conquest of England and 
the Norman exploits in southern Italy — but, for 
the most part, it is a work of local history, con- 
cerned with the affairs of Saint-Evroul and with the 
histories of great baronial families such as those of 
Belléme, Géré, Toeny, and Grandmesnil. These last 
make a record of private war and violence, not to 
say of savagery, which would seem incredible, had 
not our previous study of feudal society in the 
eleventh century prepared us to believe that it is 
essentially reliable.*° From internal evidence it is 
possible to say that Ordericus Vitalis composed his 
interpolations in the work of William of Jumiéges 
in, or not long before, 1109. They are therefore his 
earliest historical work by more than a decade, and 
they may very well have drawn the attention of his 
superiors to his historical talent and caused them to 
set him to work upon his magnum opus.”® 

It is difficult to describe in brief compass the vast 
work which Ordericus Vitalis finally decided to call 


25 For a good example see Jnterpolations d’Orderic Vital in 
William of Jumiéges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, pp. 161-163. 

26 For all that concerns the interpolations of Ordericus 
Vitalis in William of Jumiéges, see Marx’s introduction to the 
Gesta Normannorum Ducum. 


116 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the Historia Ecclesiastica. Begun in, or not long 
before, 1123, at the express command of Abbot 
Roger du Sap, it must have occupied his working 
time for almost a score of years, until old age and 
infirmity compelled him to lay down his task in 
1141. At first, it would seem, his intention was to 
write no more than a history of his own monastery 
from the time of its restoration in 1050, but, as the 
work progressed, his plan changed; and what he 
finally produced may be described as a general his- 
tory of the world from the beginning of the Chris- 
tian era to his own day, written from a Norman, 
ecclesiastical, monastic, and modern viewpoint. So 
indefatigable was he in his search for knowledge 
that he found no time to recast and revise the work 
as a whole in view of his altered plan; and so it 
remains in its present form almost without a gen- 
eral plan. Indeed, it must be confessed that the 
author never had a very definite, clear-cut plan, and 
that plans seemed to him on the whole unimportant. 
What he did have was interests, and it is by under- 
standing his interests that one can best comprehend 
the character of his work. Once he described his 
work as a history of ‘‘ Norman deeds and events for 
the use of Normans,” and again he described it as a 
modern history of Christendom (modernos Chris- 
tianorum eventus); and he was evidently speaking 
the simple truth when he said: “I labor . . . to un- 
fold simply and truthfully for the instruction of 
posterity events which I have seen happen in my 
own time or which have come to my knowledge as 


ORDERICUS VITALIS Le 


happening in neighboring countries.”’ What fascin- 
ated him was modern history, especially Norman 
history — the men and deeds, especially of the Nor- 
man race, of his own age and of the recent and 
related past. The more general portion of his work, 
dealing with the distant past, is comparatively brief, 
and was doubtless included as a concession to the 
new taste for universal history which had sprung 
up in his own generation. That he should have en- 
titled his work an “ Ecclesiastical History ” is com- 
prehensible only when one recalls the predominant 
role which the church played in the life of the 
Middle Ages.”* 

The thirteen books of the Historia Ecclestastica 
were not written in the order in which the author 
finally arranged them. The researches of Léopold 
Delisle have thrown a flood of light upon their 
order and date of composition. Books III to VI and 
VIII to X were produced one after the other in the 
order named between about 1123 and 1136; and 
apparently the scheme on which the author was then 
working was completed by the addition of Book XI 
in 1136, Book XII in 1137 or 1138, and Book XIII 
in 1141, making a complete work in ten books. But 
before Ordericus had completed this plan, he turned 
aside from his main theme and composed in 1136 
two books of more general scope on the whole of 
the Christian era, and these, somewhat retouched 
in 1141, he placed at the beginning of his work as 
Books I and II. Book VII also formed no part of 


27 Cf. Hist. Ecc., i, pp. 2-4, ii, 300-301, iii, p. 255. 


118 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


his original scheme, but was composed and added 
after 1135. It resembles Books I and II in that it 
contains a long and almost valueless section of early 
history (dealing with the Carolingian and early 
Capetian monarchies), but the later portions deal 
with the more immediate past and are valuable.* 
From the point of view of the modern researcher, 
the way in which Ordericus Vitalis used his sources 
must be reckoned one of his merits. I do not mean 
that he maintained a critical attitude towards his 
sources, for of course he did not. He often used 
legendary and apocryphal sources without a sus- 
picion as to their character. But he is candid and 
conceals nothing. Very often, when he turns to a new 
subject, he frankly announces the source on which 
he proposes to draw. For example, at the beginning 
of his account of the First Crusade, he gives notice 
that its history has already been written by Fulcher 
of Chartres and by Baldric, Archbishop of Dol; and 
at the end he says: ‘ Thus far I have followed the 
steps of the venerable Baldric in giving a true ac- 
count of the noble army of Christ... . In many 
places I have quoted the very words used by that 
writer, not daring to alter his language, as I did not 
think I could improve it.” *° He does not always 
designate his sources in this specific manner, but his 
usual practice of following them closely has made it 
comparatively easy to discover them when he leaves 


28 For full details and references see Delisle in Hist. Ecc., i, 
pp. xlvi-l. 
29 [bid., iii, pp. 622-623. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 119 


them unnamed. Delisle has compiled a list of his 
sources which may be regarded as practically com- 
plete, but it is, unfortunately, too long to be included 
here.*° It has made it possible to discriminate with 
ease between those parts of the Historia Ecclesiatica 
which are derived and, therefore, as a rule, of small 
value and those other and greater portions which 
are original, or at least are based upon the author’s 
investigations among living men, and which give to 
his work its great interest and importance. 

It is to this portion of the Historia Ecclesiastica, 
which was extracted not from books, but from the 
author’s own living age, that I would especially di- 
rect your attention. The abbey of Saint-Evroul was, 
of course, an excellent centre for the gathering of 
the information which Ordericus Vitalis required. 
Its possessions were widely scattered in Normandy 
and England. It had interests at the Norman and 
English courts as well as at the papal curia. Some 
of the monks had often to be abroad upon the 
abbey’s business, and they doubtless often returned 
with much information which the historian could 
turn to account. The community numbered among 
its members men who were connected with great 
families in Normandy, England, and southern Italy. 
Often these were old men who had entered the 
monastery to spend their declining years, and who 
in their prime had played their part in the affairs of 
the great world and knew much of past events. 


80 Jbid., i, pp. Ixiii—xciii. 


120 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Monks from Saint-Evroul had founded other mon- 
asteries in southern Italy, and frequent intercourse 
with these daughter houses kept the parent abbey 
in touch with that distant land of Norman enter- 
prise. The abbey was also, of course, a frequent 
place of hospitality for merchants and pilgrims and 
other travelers from distant parts. Thus Ordericus 
Vitalis had much information at his disposal with- 
out going beyond the confines of his abbey,** and 
yet it must ever remain a matter for wonder that 
he was able to gather the vast mass of facts with 
which he has filled his volumes. 

His handling of this mass of facts is sometimes 
highly perplexing, for, as the Historia Ecclesiastica 
as a whole is almost without a general plan, so its 
minor parts are often sadly in want of arrangement. 
The narrative is often interrupted by long and dis- 
tracting digressions. Sometimes the same event is 
recorded twice in widely separate parts of the work. 
Sometimes a single series of events is recorded twice 
in such a way as to make it appear that there are 
two series of events in question, and the reader is 
left in doubt as to the real truth. Occasionally the 
difficulty is increased by egregious blunders in 
chronology. For the dates which Ordericus Vitalis 
gives, numerous and helpful as they are, are not 
infrequently erroneous, and they are not really de- 
pendable unless they can be checked from other 
sources. 


81 [bid., pp. xxxvii-xxxviii; Haskins, Normans in European 
History, pp. 181-182. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 121 


His literary style, too, is at times labored and 
pedantic and leaves much to be desired. Without 
any knowledge of Greek, he attempts on occasion 
the use of a Greek word with unfortunate and some- 
times surprising results.** More often he uses clas- 
sical Latin words in unreal and misleading senses 
to designate medieval institutions. In imitation of 
ancient historians he adorns his text with elaborate 
speeches of his own composition in direct discourse. 
The long-winded discourses of William the Con- 
queror and of Robert Guiscard, when they were 
both in articulo mortis, will be recalled by all 
readers. 

But these blemishes, great as they are, are slight 
when compared with the great merits of Ordericus 
Vitalis as a historian. His Latin style, though some- 
times affected, is usually clear, and it is often fine 
and flexible and full of charm. As a thinker he has 
not the philosophical grasp of his younger German 
contemporary, Otto of Freising, perhaps not of his 
English contemporary, William of Malmesbury. But 
no other historian of his time had his breadth of 
human interest or his zeal for full and detailed 
knowledge. All things modern and human interested 
him, whether the local affairs of his abbey or distant 
events in England, Italy, or the Orient, whether 
military, ecclesiastical, religious, or literary and ar- 
tistic. Especially was he interested in people; and 
no other work of his time contains such a collection 
of portraits of both men and women. He was a fair 


32 Cf. Delisle in Hist. Ecc., i, pp. xli-xliii. 


122 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


judge of character, also, and he was not without 
insight into the meaning of events. He saw and 
comprehended the life of all classes. And he ob- 
served not externals merely, he had a keen eye for 
the intimate and personal. No other writer of his 
time is so rich in what is called local color. The 
affairs of the clergy and nobility naturally fill the 
centre of his picture, but he did not overlook the 
peasantry and he felt keenly for their sufferings in 
time of war. 

With respect to the proper attitude of a historian 
towards the great issues of the day, he expressed his 
ideal when he said, “I shall relate the melancholy 
vicissitudes of the English and Normans without 
flattery, seeking no reward from either victors or 
vanquished.” ** In practice he was, as a rule, not able 
to rise quite to this high level. But such prejudices 
as he had were honest prejudices, openly held, and 
they need mislead no one. As a monk and a church- 
man, he had a strong interest in peace and orderly 
government. Feudal violence, the inevitable accom- 
paniment of weak government, was the thing above 
all else to be dreaded. For this reason his sympa- 
thies were, for example, very strongly on the side of 
Henry I, as against Robert Curthose, and he prob- 
ably does the latter less than justice. Again, he was 
thoroughly loyal to his own religious house and 
order and to the Benedictine rule as observed by 
his order. He had very little of the temper of an 
ascetic and he had a great fondness for ancient and 


88. Hist. cca, pi rOt. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 123 


established ways. For this reason while he gives a 
fine account of the early history of the Cistercians, 
who had recently sprung into fame, he is content to 
express a formal admiration for them which does 
not conceal a certain prejudice against them. In- 
novations in dress or in the fashion of wearing the 
hair also shocked him, and his outbursts on these 
subjects are very well known. But on the whole he 
managed to maintain the tempered equanimity 
which ought to characterize the historian; and he 
succeeded in producing not only a marvelous record 
of events, but, in the words of his latest judge, ‘‘ the 
most faithful and living picture which has reached 
us of the society of his age.” ** 

It is a strange fact that the great work of Order- 
icus Vitalis was so little known and appreciated in 
the Middle Ages and that it was so long neglected 
in modern times. Ordericus, the historian, had no 
successor among the monks of Saint-Evroul, and his 
work, so to say, died with him. His precious vol- 
umes lay for centuries in the abbey library almost 
unnoticed. Apart from the original manuscript of 
some six-sevenths of the work in the author’s own 
fine hand and a fortunate copy of the remainder and 
a copy of three other short fragments, we know of 
no manuscript of the Historia Ecclesiastica which is 
older than the fifteenth century.** The work is un- 


84 Haskins, The Normans in European History, p. 183. 

85 The manuscripts are described and dated by Delisle in 
Hist. Ecc., i, pp. xciii-cix. See also Bibl. de l’Ec. des Chartes, 
XXXVil, pp. 491-494, lxxi, pp. 485 ff., and Delisle’s introduction to 
Chronique de Robert de Torigni, i, pp. xix—xxii. 


I24 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


mentioned by any medieval author, and appears to 
have been almost unknown to the Middle Ages. 
Robert of Torigny was the only writer of the twelfth 
century who made any extensive use of it, perhaps 
he was the only writer of that period who used it 
at all. He drew upon it for his continuations of the 
Gesta Normannorum Ducum of William of Jumiéges 
and for his continuation of the universal chronicle 
of Sigebert of Gemblours and also for his treatise on 
monastic orders and the abbeys of Normandy. It 
may be conjectured that he used it for all these pur- 
poses while he was still a monk of Bec, that is, be- 
fore he became abbot of Mont-Saint-Michel in 1154. 
The Historia Ecclesiastica was also used in the com- 
position of an unimportant chronicle of Bec, which 
is not yet available in any satisfactory edition, and 
which is not independent of Robert of Torigny. It 
was also used in the fourteenth century in the com- 
pilation of an unimportant anonymous catalogue of 
Norman and English bishops.*° 

The Historia Ecclesiastica began to be appreci- 
ated in the sixteenth century, and two unsuccessful 
attempts were then made to publish it. But it re- 
mained for André Duchesne to produce the editio 
princeps in 1619 as a part of his Historiae Norman- 
norum Scriptores. Most of it was again published 
in the eighteenth century by the Benedictines of 
Saint-Maur in their collection entitled Recueil des 


86 See Delisle in Hist. Ecc., i, pp. lix-Ix, and in Chronique 
de Robert de Torigni, ii, pp. xiii-xvi, and i, pp. xix—xxii, liv; 
and Marx in Wm. of Jumiéges, Gesta Normannorum Ducum, pp. 
XXVIi-Xxix. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 125 


Historiens des Gaules et de la France.*" But a really 
satisfactory edition was still wanting until in the 
middle of the nineteenth century the monumental 
edition of the Société de Histoire de France was 
produced by the combined efforts of Auguste Le 
Prévost and Léopold Delisle **—a work which in 
its text, notes, introduction, and index represents 
very nearly the perfection of modern scholarship 
and makes the reader forget almost all the short- 
comings of Ordericus Vitalis. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. WRITINGS 


Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. Auguste Le Prévost and 
Léopold Delisle, for the Société de l’Histoire de France, 
5 volumes, Paris, 1838-55. This supersedes all previous 
editions. 

Annales Uticenses, of which Ordericus Vitalis was in 
part the author, published as an appendix in Historia Ec- 
clestastica, ed. Le Prévost and Delisle, v. pp. 139-173. 

Interpolations in the Gesta Normannorum Ducum 
of William of Jumiéges, ed. Jean Marx, Paris and Rouen, 
IQI4, pp. 151-108. 

Three poems without title, published by Léopold De- 
lisle in Annuaire-Bulletin of the Société de l’Histoire de 
France, 1863, Part II, pp. 1-13. The first two were previ- 
ously printed by Edélestand du Meéril, Poésies Populaires 
Latines du Moyen Age, Paris, 1847, pp. 102-107. 

A poem entitled Conquestus de Abieccione et Desola- 
tione Sancte Dei Ecclesie, published by Léopold Delisle 
in Bibliothéque de l’Ecole des Chartes, LXXI, pp. 505- 
5006. 


126 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


A poem on Richard of Ilchester, abbot of Saint-Ev- 
roul, published by Delisle, zbid., XXXIV, pp. 276-282. 
Doubtfully attributed to Ordericus Vitalis. 


B. TRANSLATIONS OF THE HISTORIA ECCLESIASTICA 


Into French by L. F. DuBois, in Guizot’s Collection 
des Mémoires relatifs a UV Histoire de France, XXV- 
XXVIII, Paris, 1825-27. Based on the edition of Du- 
chesne with some comparison with the original manu- 
script. 

Into English by Thos. Forester, The Ecclesiastical 
History of England and Normandy, 4 vols., London, 
1853-56. Based on the edition of Le Prévost and Delisle, 
but a poor translation. 


C. BIOGRAPHY AND COMMENTARIES 


The following works by Léopold Delisle are of funda- 
mental importance, and the foregoing paper is very 
largely based upon them: “ Notice sur Orderic Vital,” 
in Historia Ecclesiastica, 1, pp. i-cvi (1855), reprinted 
with a “note additionnelle ” by the Société Historique et 
Archéologique de l’Orne, Orderic Vital et Abbaye de 
Saint-Evroul (Alencon, 1912), pp. 1-78; “Vers At- 
tribués a Orderic Vital,” in Annuaire-Bulletin of the 
Société de l’Histoire de France, 1863, Part II, pp. 1-13; 
“Lettre a M. Jules Lair sur un Exemplaire de Guillaume 
de Jumiéges copié par Orderic Vital,” in Bzbliothéque 
de l’Ecole des Chartes, XXXIV (1873), pp. 267-282; 
preface to Matériaux pour l’Edition de Guillaume de 
Jumiéges préparée par Jules Lair (Paris, 1910), re- 
printed in Bibliotheque de l’Ecole des Chartes, LXXI, 
pp. 481-526. Also important is the introduction to the 
edition by Jean Marx of the Gesta Normannorum Ducum 
of William of Jumiéges (Paris and Rouen, 1914). See 
also F. P. G. Guizot, “‘ Notice sur Orderic Vital,” in Vol. 


ORDERICUS VITALIS 127 


I of DuBois’ translation (supra), pp. i-xiii; T. D. Hardy, 
Descriptive Catalogue of Materials relating to the His- 
tory of Great Britain and Ireland (London, 1865), II, 
pp. 217-223; R. W. Church, Saint Anselm (London, 
1870), Ch. VI; E. A. Freeman, History of the Norman 
Conquest (2nd ed., Oxford, 1870-76), IV, pp. 494 ff.; 
Jules Tessier, De Orderico Vitali (Poitiers, 1872); Fétes 
de Saint-Evroul: Comte-Rendu et Discours (the inaugu- 
ration of a monument to Ordericus Vitalis, 27 August 
1912), in Bulletin of the Société Historique et Archéo- 
logique de l’Orne, XX XI, pp. 476-566; C. H. Haskins, 
The Normans in European History (Boston and New 
York, 1915), pp. 180-183. 


LAS CASAS (c. 1474-1566) 


Francis J. TscHAN, PH.D. 
Pennsylvania State College 


EW men that were prominently identified with 
the Spanish conquest of the New World are 
as esteemed as Las Casas. His personality as 

well as the principles for which he stood and fought 
command the admiration of men who can see little 
if any good in the makers of early Latin American 
history. ‘‘ The painful narrative ” of Spanish rela- 
tions with the Indians, declares Mr. George Ellis 
in the essay which he contributed to Justin Winsor’s 
Narrative and Critical History of America, “is to 
be relieved by a tribute of admiration and reveren- 
tial homage to a saintly man of signal virtues and 
heroic services, one of the grandest and most august 
characters in the world’s history. . . . Truly was 
he a remarkable and conspicuous personage, — 
unique, as rather the anomaly than the product of 
his age and land, his race and fellowship. His char- 
acter impresses us alike by its loveliness and its 
ruggedness, its tenderness and its vigor, its melting 
sympathies and its robust energies. His mental and 
moral endowments were of the strongest and the 
richest, and his spiritual insight and fervor well- 
nigh etherealized him. His gifts and abilities gave 
him a rich versatility in capacity and resource. He 
128 


LAS CASAS 129 


was immensely in advance of his age, so as to be 
actually in antagonism with it. He was free alike 
from its prejudices, its limitations, and many of its 
superstitions, as well as from its barbarities. He 
was single-hearted, courageous, fervent, and per- 
sistent, bold and daring as a venturesome voyager 
over new seas and mysterious depths of virgin wild- 
erness, missionary, scholar, theologian, acute logi- 
cian, historian, curious observer of Nature, the peer 
of St. Paul in wisdom and zeal.’ He was “ the only 
Spaniard who stands out luminously, in the heroism 
and glory of true sanctity, amid these gory scenes, 
himself a true soldier of Christ.” 

More temperate is the estimate of Las Casas 
which A. F. Bandelier, the well-known archae- 
ologist, contributed to the Catholic Encyclopedia. 
“In his active sympathy for the American aborig- 
ines Las Casas had not stood alone. He had on his 
side, in principle, the sovereigns and the most in- 
fluential men and women in Spain. He was sincerely 
admired for his absolute devotion to the cause of 
humanity, his untiring activity and zeal. He stood 
out among the men of his day as an exceptionally 
noble personality. But the more perspicacious 
among his admirers saw, also, that he was eminently 
unpractical, and, while they supported within reason, 
they could not approve the extremes which he per- 
emptorily demanded. His very popularity spoiled 
his character. . . . Everywhere he found abuses, 
and everywhere painted them in the blackest colors, 
making no allowances for local conditions or for the 


130 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


dark side of the Indian character. ... He ad- 
dressed to the King a memorial, couched in violent 
terms, on Peruvian affairs, of which he had not the 
least personal knowledge. . . . By no means thor- 
oughly acquainted with the character of his Indian 
wards, he idealized them, but never took time to 
study them. . . . Neither was he in any exact sense 
a missionary or a teacher . . . the life of constant 
personal sacrifice among the aborigines was not to 
his taste. . . . He did almost nothing to educate 
the Indians. The name, Apostle of the Indies, which 
has been given him, was not deserved; whereas 
there were men opposed to his views who richly 
merited it, but who had neither the gifts nor the 
inclination for that noisy propaganda in which Las 
Casas was so eminently successful.” 


I 


Interesting as a review of the life of Las Casas, 
and inviting as a study of the merits of the esti- 
mates we have cited, might be, we shall not under- 
take to present either of them directly. The life of 
Las Casas has been many times written, and his 
writings many times discussed, both so thoroughly 
and so critically that now he who runs may read. 
Our concern may more profitably be about the 
question: Is Las Casas the father of American his- 
toriography? We might limit our question to this — 
is he the father of Spanish American _historiog- 
raphy, but for the fact that we like to think of 


LAS CASAS 131 


America as a whole and not piecemeal; that is, of 
an English America that became our country and 
the dominions north of us, of a Spanish America 
that was shattered into over a dozen fragments 
when Spain was forced to withdraw from the re- 
gions south of us, and of a Portuguese America 
that became Brazil. The rise and evolution of his- 
torical writing in all these Americas was conditioned 
by factors that are analogous, if not identical. The 
Old World lingered long in the New. The traditions, 
the ideas, the attitudes — all that is comprehended 
by the term culture —of the parent peoples came 
to the Americas with the colonists and were modi- 
fied, in some regions more quickly and more thor- 
oughly than in others, by the new environment. 
The study of the development of one section throws 
light on the study of the evolution of the others. In 
the twentieth century Canada may profitably con- 
sider how we solved problems that met us in the 
nineteenth century and even in the eighteenth. The 
historian of Argentina can see the reasons for our 
sectional strife, even the causes of our financial 
crises, repeated in the story of his country. There 
is, then, no good reason why we should not let our 
question stand as it is: Is Las Casas the father of 
American historiography? 


II 


Our answer to this question depends, however, 
on the answer which we give to another — When 


132 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


may a country that traces its origin to colonies 
planted by a state, the inhabitants of which had 
already attained a high cultural level at the time 
the colonies were settled, be said to have an histori- 
ography that is indisputably its own? What crite- 
rion, or criteria have we by which we may say that 
this cultural activity or that institution is essentially 
American and not European? The solidarity of our 
modern world makes compounds of all our works 
and increases the difficulty of our search for distin- 
guishing criteria. 

Sometimes the line between that which is Euro- 
pean and that which is American seems very plainly 
drawn. Politically, for example, the distinction is 
apparently very clearly marked. The colonies rebel. 
Their rebellion is so far successful that one or more 
states possessing independent standing in the esti- 
mation of civilized nations recognize the independ- 
ence of the colonies and, perhaps, even aid them in 
forcing the metropolitan or mother country to ac- 
cord them like recognition. The year 1778, in which 
France recognized our independence, or the year 
1783, in which England reluctantly consented to 
regard us as a sovereign and independent congeries 
of states, might dispute the claim of the year 1776, 
to being our natal year. These years, however, fix 
in time our formal, not our actual independence. 
Ultimately our revolution came because we had de- 
veloped a political philosophy which was incompat- 
ible with that of England. We desired to regulate 
our governmental agencies according to principles 


LAS CASAS 133 


that were not acceptable to England. One of the 
principles, in some respects the most fundamental, 
was that of sovereignty within spheres. We held 
that though the English King and Parliament were 
supreme in matters of internal, of imperial concern, 
our legislatures were supreme in matters of external, 
of colonial concern. To Englishmen this doctrine 
seemed an abuse of their cherished ideas of sover- 
eignty. We had developed a political philosophy 
which was heretical in their estimation. As a matter 
of fact we had made a real contribution to the po- 
litical thought of mankind. This contribution was, 
moreover, characteristic of ourselves. We _ had 
evolved it out of our environment and circumstances 
and, except in so far as we were indebted to Eng- 
lish political thought for our basis, not out of the 
environment of England. We had, without doubt, 
reached the creative level of political intelligence. 
Whether our Revolution was successful or not, we 
had achieved real political independence. The com- 
pelling others to recognize our political majority 
was dependent on a multitude of other forces, some 
external, some internal, on which it is not essential 
to our thesis to dwell. 

Sometimes colonial peoples have independence, 
so to speak, thrust upon them before they have 
reached this creative level of political intelligence. 
The interest of some power, for example, may de- 
mand their recognition as a sovereign state and may 
compel the metropolitan country to surrender its 
authority over them. Such a people are likely to have 


134 CHURCH HISTORIANS. 


a stormy political future. Not having attained their 
political majority, they are likely to imitate too 
closely the successful political institutions of other 
peoples, and this imitating almost invariably calls 
for many adjustments each of them more or less 
costly and painful. Are we right, for example, in 
regarding the innumerable Latin American revolu- 
tions as disturbances caused by the lusting of am- 
bitious and unscrupulous men for power or for loot? 
Are not these revolutions in reality so many efforts 
to adjust institutions to conditions that were not - 
correctly appreciated in the beginning of the na- 
tional existence of the Latin American peoples or 
that have arisen in the course of their national 
lives? One man’s coat rarely fits another» It must 
be taken in here and let out there, and every change 
involves the trouble of taking off the garment and 
trying it on again. 

Without straining for final exactness of state- 
ment, we may conclude that a declaration of inde- 
pendence of the mother country by the colonies, 
even the reification of that declaration does not 
clearly mark the real political independence of the 
colonies. Real political independence comes with 
the development of the ability of a colonial people, 
that is, the politically conscious part of that people, 
to think creatively in political matters in a manner 
that is characteristic of themselves. Seldom is the . 
year of the real political majority of a people dis- 
tinctly marked. With nations, as with individuals, 
the definitely recorded day on which they came 


LAS CASAS | 135 


into the world is far less important than that on 
which they first reasoned, independently of others, 
their own way to a conclusion on some cultural 
topic, whether or not that conclusion had been 
reached by some one else before they came to it. 


Ill 


The criterion of creative ability, which deter- 
mines the political independence of a colonial peo- 
ple with greater finality than do the norms that are 
commonly accepted, determines also that people’s 
artistic and intellectual independence. The creation 
of a new art or of a new philosophy, taking that 
term in its widest sense, presupposes the colonial 
people to have been so much affected by their New 
World environment that, notwithstanding their an- 
cestry and cultural heritage, their emotional and 
intellectual being or soul has become different. 
Other factors, the consideration of which would 
lead us far afield, contribute to this difference in 
the cultural being of the colonial and the parent 
people. Among these factors we may count the bit- 
terness which the colonists feel toward the metro- 
politan people in consequence of wrongs, real or 
fancied, that led, or may lead, them into rebellion. 
The production that manifests this new soul need 
not be a magnum opus. The earliest efforts of a 
people’s art, indeed, often seem too trivial for the 
artists of later years to notice. Long before Grieg 
interpreted for us the soul of his northland home, 


136 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


his people had expressed themselves in their char- 
acteristic songs and dances. Long before Mac- 
Dowell’s compositions were hailed by critics as dis- 
tinctively American, relatively obscure singers had 
given voice to the soul of this new land. Pari passu 
the first efforts of a colonial people to interpret old 
truths in new terms, characteristic of themselves, or 
to thrust forward the frontier of knowledge at the 
expense of the seemingly impenetrable wilderness 
of human ignorance and inexperience may be very 
modest. However trivial and however modest the 
early characteristic efforts of the colonial people in 
art or philosophy may be, these efforts constitute 
the achievement of their artistic or intellectual in- 
dependence. 


IV 


In particularizing these observations with respect 
to historical studies, several distinctions must be 
made. In history two elements call for consideration 
— the literary and the scientific. We expect the his- 
torian to be able not only to carry on original in- 
vestigations in his subject, but also to describe the 
process of his investigations and to state his con- 
clusions in a pleasing manner. Few universities 
fail to demand of the writers of dissertations the 
ability to set forth their matter in a style that passes 
as good English, or that is at least appropriate to 
the subject on which they are writing. No univer- 
sity will, however, accept a dissertation, no matter 
how well written, that does not meet the scientific 


LAS CASAS 137 


requirements expected for the degree to which the 
candidate is aspiring. The universities regard pri- 
marily the substance of the paper, and secondarily 
its form. The workaday world and people who are 
only literary in their tastes are likely to stress the 
form rather than the substance of an historical com- 
position. This emphasis accounts, along with ad- 
vertising, for the presence on so many bookshelves 
of such lucubrations as —to mention only the more 
notorious perennials — Lord’s Beacon Lights, Rid- 
path’s History, and Wells’ Outline. Elegance of 
form and style may give a work about historical 
matter rank as a literary production, but, unless it 
also qualifies scientifically, not as an historical pro- 
duction. We shall not, then, in our groping for the 
beginnings of colonial historiography consider a 
work primal because its literary qualities mark it 
as being of the New World and not of the Old. 
Our criterion finds application in the scientific 
element in history, the element that is essential, that 
makes history history and not necessarily literature. 
In this element there is an apparatus of research of 
which the historian, whose work would entitle him 
to primacy in the new historiography, must be mas- 
ter. Let it be conceded that this apparatus was not 
perfected in the days when the Spaniards and the 
Portuguese, and even when the English and the 
French, came to America. Still the sense that de- 
mands of the historian that he consult, if possible, 
eye-witnesses and evaluate what they say was not 
dormant. The days of the Spanish conquest were 


138 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


also the days of Lorenzo Valla and Nicolo Mac- 
chiavelli. 

The apparatus of research, however, is in a sense 
only material. Skill and infinite patience in its use 
may win for one fame as a compiler. The analysis 
which this apparatus makes possible must be en- 
livened by that historical imagination, or insight 
which enables the historian properly to interpret 
the events and movements that are occurring in his 
presence or the accounts the worth of which he has 
evaluated. 

This historical imagination has been defined by 
Thompson in his Reference Studies as “‘ the faculty 
that enables the student to put himself in thought 
in the time and place about which he is reading.” 
This imagination is the sine qua non of sound his- 
torical writing. In this element our criterion finds 
application. 

Difficulties, however, at once arise. We assume 
at the outset that the father of the new historiog- 
raphy is one of the colonial people, one who, whether 
born in the Old World or in the New, has identified 
himself with the younger country and its popula- 
tion. Obviously an historian of the parent stock who 
writes the history of the colonies will have done 
only what is required of everyone of his craft if his 
work qualifies with respect to this historical imagi- 
nation. With his work the historiography of the 
new people cannot be said to begin. The colonial 
historian, too, will not have done more than is ex- 
pected of one in his profession if he writes in har- 


LAS CASAS 139 


mony with this historical imagination. If he be the 
first to do so, however, he may be regarded as the 
father of the new historiography. His work may be 
on the history of his own people, or on that of some 
other people. In either event he will have demon- 
strated that the colonial people has attained the 
creative level of historical intelligence. 

His task will have been by no means easy of 
execution if he write the story of his own people. 
He must know intimately both the parent stock and 
its offspring. The Old World does linger long in the 
New, but there is a time when the Old begins to 
fade from the New. That time is at the beginning 
of the colonial era. The moment the colonists estab- 
lish themselves in the New World they begin to 
be different. They are then on the other side of the 
ocean. They are then in a different environment. 
They need to make adjustments of which the met- 
ropolitan people and their officials cannot reason- 
ably be expected to comprehend the necessity. As a 
matter of fact the mother country almost invariably 
regarded the colonists as so many workers for its 
advantage. Some of the English colonists were rela- 
tively free from this condition. Yet these colonists 
had other difficulties which could not but make 
them feel that in becoming colonists they had meas- 
urably exchanged a state of economic mastery for 
a state of economic dependence. From the founda- 
tion of the new states, then, their people are differ- 
ent. This difference is slight. In its slightness lies 
the difficulty of the historian. Few men have ears 


I40 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


so keen as to be able to distinguish the tones be- 
tween the half steps of the musical scale. The colo- 
nial historian may not be able to catch the quarter 
tones by which his people vary from the accepted 
pitches set by the parent voice. His scientific imagi- 
nation, his ability to interpret his own people may 
not be subtle enough to perceive the essential dis- 
tinctions. His body may be in the colonies, but his 
spirit is still in the motherland. His work, then, 
belongs to the historiography of the metropolis. If, 
however, our historian’s scientific imagination be 
colored by the environment of the New World, if 
his work show that he has lived, or is living in the 
New World, and has not been, or is not merely 
dwelling therein, if he interpret his data>in terms 
of the culture of the New World, however crude 
that culture may be, then may we say that in him 
the colonial people have achieved independence in 
the field of historical endeavor. Whether the ana- 
lytical processes which entered into its making were 
performed in Europe or in America matters not. 
What does matter is the spirit of his synthesis. If 
this spirit is of the colonies, their historiography 
has begun. 


V 


In considering the claims of Las Casas to being 
the father of American historiography, we could 
reasonably invoke the rule that the honor can be- 
long only to a colonist. Las Casas can hardly be 
called a colonist. He did not identify himself with 


p) 


LAS CASAS IAI 


the New World. What he might have done, if he 
had been successful in his mission, obviously does 
not matter. Let us, however, give him the benefit of 
any doubt that may exist. Are the writings of Las 
Casas of America or of Europe? Are they instinct 
with the spirit of the New World, or are they ani- 
mated by that of the Old? Sympathetic as we may 
be with Las Casas, we cannot say that there is any- 
thing either in his career or in his writings that is 
peculiarly suggestive of the New World. 

Las Casas was a Spaniard who, like many spir- 
ited Spaniards of his day, came to the New World. 
His father had crossed the ocean with Columbus on 
his second voyage and had brought back for his 
son, then a law student at Salamanca, a young In- 
dian slave, who, along with other natives that had 
been carried to Spain, was liberated by the order 
of the Queen, Isabella. Possibly this act gave the 
young Las Casas inspiration for his career. When 
he himself came to the Indies, in 1502, his training 
in law stood him in good stead, for we find him 
acting soon after his arrival as the adviser of Gov- 
ernors Ovando and Velasquez. The first ‘gold 
rush” of our history, greater than any Europe had 
before experienced, was then taking place in the 
Indies. The legally-minded — and at this time per- 
haps also religiously-minded— Las Casas was 
caught in the whirl of events in which he lost his 
bearings. All that he could see were the evils of the 
times—-and there were many of them — particu- 
larly the abuse which the natives suffered in con- 


142 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


sequence of the cupidity of his countrymen. Other 
Spaniards in the Indies also commiserated the In- 
dians, but there is record of none who more com- 
pletely devoted himself to the cause of the relief 
and the saving of this unfortunate folk. Las Casas 
became a priest and so gained, as Bandelier states 
in his article in the Catholic Encyclopedia, two im- 
portant points: almost complete freedom of speech 
and material independence. Of both advantages he 
made the fullest use. 

He was never idle. Travels in America and voy- 
ages to Europe filled the years of his missionary 
life. In 1515 he was in Spain telling King Ferdinand 
of conditions in the colonies. His words did not 
fall on deaf ears, but Ferdinand died. Las Casas 
found, however, other helpers, among whom the 
most powerful was the famous Cardinal Ximines. 
In 1517 Las Casas went to Spain a second time to 
urge that men of family settle in the Indies and till 
the soil instead of demanding that work from the 
natives. Spaniards, however, were averse to going 
across seas to be husbandmen, and the project 
failed. Las Casas also joined those who advocated 
the exportation of negroes to the Indies to replace 
the Indians, and he begged for means to establish 
a model Indian settlement. Charles I, the new sover- 
eign, assigned without delay an asiento to one of 
his court officials, and made ample provision for an 
Indian settlement which was to be located at 
Cumana in Venezuela. Negro slavery in America 
got such an impetus that, later in life, Las Casas 


LAS CASAS 143 


much regretted his having advocated it. The settle- 
ment, unfortunately, failed through the fault of the 
Indians. Las Casas, however, plausibly laid the 
blame for the catastrophe on the Spanish adven- 
turers. Nevertheless the failure of this project sorely 
tried his soul. He sought solace as one of the 
brethren of a quiet Dominican friary in Santo Do- 
mingo. For eight years he studied and meditated. 
Regaining his courage, he left this haven in 1530, 
and, there is some reason to believe, went to Spain. 
Presently we find him in Mexico and in Central 
America, where he stayed seven or eight years, not, 
however, without interrupting the period by another 
voyage to Spain in the interest of his cause. In 1539 
he sailed for Spain again, this time in behalf of a 
plan for another Indian settlement from which all 
laymen were to be excluded. His hopes for its suc- 
cess were high, and he would, no doubt, have re- 
turned to America immediately after he had secured 
authority and means for the enterprise if he had not 
been detained by the Council of the Indies. That 
Council then had under consideration a body of 
laws which it hoped would better the government 
of the colonies and remedy the grossest evils in the 
Indian situation. This code, promulgated in 1542 
and generally known as the “ New Laws,” made 
Las Casas the most unpopular man in the Indies. 
The colonists were not mistaken in their belief that 
it was in part at least the result of his agitation. 
Two years later, Las Casas, still in Spain, was con- 
secrated Bishop of Chiapa. He did not aspire to 


I44 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


episcopal honors. He accepted them only because 
he thought they would help him carry out his re- 
form programme. He learned, however, that even 
bishops can be helpless. In vain did he issue a 
diocesan order that absolution be refused to men 
who held Indians in bondage contrary to the provi- 
sions of the “‘ New Laws.” In 1547 he went to Spain 
again, this time never to return. He died in Madrid 
in 1566. 


VI 


Las Casas’ writings are as was his life. He was a 
man of one purpose; apparently he could not turn 
from this purpose even for a moment. His cause 
blurred his historical vision. His writings, volumi- 
nous as they are, are all on one theme. In the years 
that were filled with the long voyages between 
Spain and America, with tedious waitings for in- 
terviews with Spanish officials, lay and ecclesiastical, 
with endless conferences with these dignitaries about 
how his much desired reforms might be effected, 
either in general or in particular, or with respect to 
projects he had in mind or had begun, Las Casas 
found time to preach and to write. Bibliographers 
cannot agree on the number of his major writings. 
Sabin was of the opinion that thirteen tracts of his 
were still in manuscript, but Field reduced this 
number to five. In 1854 Stevens printed six papers 
from original manuscripts in his possession. Three 
of these papers are without doubt from Las Casas’ 
pen. Nine tracts, known under the title of the first 


LAS CASAS 145 


and most important, Breuissima relacion de la de- 
struycion de las Indias, were printed in Seville in 
the years 1552-1553, and reprinted in 1646 under 
the general caption, Las Obras, etc., but with the 
original date, 1552-1553. The title of the first tract 
speaks for itself. The second tells of the cruelties 
which the Indians endured, as observed by a Spanish 
traveller. The ninth proves the right of the sover- 
eigns of Castile and Leon to absolute supremacy in 
the Indies, and, therefore, their competence to exe- 
cute the reforms which he proposed for the natives. 
The eighth lays down the principles on which his 
defense of the rights of the Indians are based. The 
third discusses twenty reasons why the natives 
ought not to be enslaved. The fourth and seventh 
deal with his confessional enforcement of the “‘ New 
Laws ” in the diocese of Chiapa. The fifth has to 
do with Las Casas’ controversy with Sepulveda, the 
canonist who sought to lead him into the toils of 
the Inquisition on the score of statements he made 
in behalf of the Indians. The sixth gives reasons 
why the natives should be restored to freedom. 
There is also a tenth tract written in Latin and 
printed in Germany five years after Las Casas’ 
death, that should very probably be credited to him. 

Besides these tracts Las Casas also wrote a 
fiercely polemical defense of the lives and charac- 
ters of the Indians, the Apologética Historia de las 
Indias, and Historia de las Indias in three volumes. 
The latter work he probably began in the Domini- 
can convent in which he took refuge when the In- 


146 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


dians foiled his efforts to establish a settlement for 
them at Cumana,. Some of his biographers, among 
them Helps, think that he did not begin this work 
until he returned to Spain for the last time. Be 
that as it may, the book occupied him as late as 
1561. He never finished it; and probably forecast- 
ing the reception it would receive if it were printed, 
he enjoined his brethren not to permit anyone to 
make use of it within forty years of his death. His 
wishes, however, were not respected. Herrera, ap- 
pointed official historiographer by Philip II, copied 
much of it into the Historia General which he pub- 
lished in 1601. Las Casas’ Historia lay in manu- 
script until the Royal Academy of History at 
Madrid issued it in five volumes in 1875-1876. 
With the Historia, too, were printed parts of the 
A pologética Historia. 

The Historia de las Indias is Las Casas’ magnum 
opus. It is invaluable for the documents imbedded 
in it, the originals of which have apparently been 
lost forever. Much of what we know about Colum- 
bus and the early years of Spanish expansion in 
America is derived from the Historia. Yet the work 
has never been completely translated into English, 
and it is not frequently seen in Spanish. It was long 
the hope of the writer that the late Knights of 
Columbus Historical Commission would undertake 
the production of a critical edition of the Historia, 
if not of all the extant writings, of Las Casas. The 
work is valuable, too, because it is so highly auto- 
biographic. 


LAS CASAS 147 


VII 


The published writings of Las Casas were issued 
in Spain. This fact is due not merely to the accident 
that in his day publishing facilities in Spanish 
America were meagre or non-existent, but also to 
the conviction of Las Casas that he must reform the 
New World from the Old. From the first this was 
his plan; hence, his many visits to Spain. That his 
plan of campaign in behalf of Indian freedom should 
have been so oriented was but natural. The Span- 
ish colonies were ruled from Spain. Reforms in the 
colonies should, therefore, originate in Spain. The 
most that could be done in the colonies was to pre- 
pare the way for the favorable reception of the 
reform proposals when they came from Spain, or 
to inaugurate such enterprises as clearly fell within 
the scope of regulations already established. His 
plan, moreover, possessed the merit of winning for 
his reforms the favor of men who were less directly 
interested economically in their results than were 
the colonists. This orientation is indicative, also, of 
the working of Las Casas’ mind. He wisely made 
his appeal to the audience which he knew best how 
to sway. For several years he had pleaded with the 
Spaniards of the Indies, he had scolded them, he 
had denounced them — all with little or no effect. 
One is reminded of the vain efforts of the wind in 
the old story of its contest with the sun to decide 
which was the stronger. Las Casas knew not how to 
fall in with the Spanish American public, because 


148 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


he could never get its point of view. His nearest 
approach to its viewpoint was the proposal to sub- 
stitute negroes for the Indian toilers. This idea, 
however, was not original with him. Negro slavery 
had been introduced into Spanish America before 
Las Casas began his crusade. Negro slavery had 
met with approval in Portugal and Spain in the days 
of Henry the Navigator. In reality, therefore, Las 
Casas’ proposal only carries us back to the Old 
World, though it did fall in with American needs. 
There seems no escape from the conclusion that 
Las Casas’ campaign was ultimately based on Spain 
because among other reasons his mind was of Spain 
and not of Spanish America. 

This conclusion, however, assumes the existence 
of a Spanish American mind at a time when such 
a mind presumably had not evolved. The mind of a 
colonial people is not formed in a day. Nearly all 
the Spaniards who were active in America in the 
early years of Las Casas’ activity had come from 
Spain. Las Casas himself, born in 1474, was but 
eighteen or nineteen years old when Columbus dis- 
covered the Indies. In a new country, however, the 
economic pressure is ordinarily great enough to 
change in a very short time the attitude of men with 
respect to questions of the hour. Colonists may cling 
for years without number to the ideas and ways of 
their motherland in matters not of immediate, vital 
concern. In Spanish America the economic pressure 
was not ordinary; it was extraordinary. Europe 
needed nothing so much as gold and silver. In 


LAS CASAS 149 


America there was this gold and silver. Enough 
treasure had been filched from the Indians, or found 
in readily accessible locations, to warrant the stak- 
ing of life itself on the possibility of finding more. 
Labor only was necessary to make real the dreams 
of the adventurers, but in the New World labor was 
the scarcest of all things unless the idle native could 
be put to work. 

When, therefore, Las Casas preached against the 
employment of the Indian in the gold diggings, he as 
much as told the Spanish Americans: Here, indeed, 
is treasure untold; it is yours for the trouble of get- 
ting it, but you may not use the only means of se- 
curing it. Such propaganda will promptly develop a 
colonial mind. Las Casas’ inability to appreciate the 
psychology of a gold-rush (and who can criticize 
him for his inability to understand? Was he not by 
profession a leader of men on their way to a world 
in which the idea of gold is superfluous?) and his 
“big stick”? methods of effecting his programme 
very quickly created a Spanish American mind that 
would not receive his preachings whether delivered 
in person or in the guise of the ‘‘ New Laws.” So de- 
termined became this colonial mind that even the 
Bishop of Chiapa left the See which was the last 
resort in his campaign. It was the same mind that 
could ignore all the commercial regulations of the 
metropolis and trade cheerfully with its most im- 
placable enemies, even to the ultimate ruin of the 
empire. This mind Las Casas should have confronted 
with thinking of its own kind. This mind he should 


I50 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


have been able to interpret. Unfortunately the indi- 
vidual is sometimes less plastic than the group. Las 
Casas could not think in terms of the American 
mind; indeed, his agitation negatively contributed 
not a little to its formation and determined char- 
acter. 

Even a casual reading of his writings confirms 
the conclusion that Las Casas was non-American in 
his thinking. As an historian he belonged to the 
same school as Herrera in the seventeenth century 
and Munoz in the eighteenth. All three men saw 
the New World as something objective to them- 
selves, as something to be described, not so much 
in terms of itself, as in terms of a particular cause 
or of the culture of the motherland. The works of 
Las Casas and Herrera unmistakenly belong to the 
literature of Spanish expansion. As well might we 
say that Hakluyt is the father of English American 
historiography because he so earnestly urged his 
countrymen to people the new lands. The honor of 
being the father of American historiography, in the 
sense which we have defined, must, then, be ac- 
corded to some other historian, devoted not to a 
cause, but to the understanding of the colonial 
people. 

Still there are good reasons why for good and for 
ill Las Casas should be better known. Without his 
works, particularly the Historia, the beginnings of 
Europe in America would indeed be shrouded in 
darkness. Without his writings we should probably 
know little of a singularly noble character. With- 


LAS CASAS 151 


out his writings the English, the Dutch, and the 
French would have experienced great difficulty in 
justifying their courses with respect to Spain. As 
the most recent writer on the history of Spain in 
Europe and America has put it: “.. . things so 
fell out, in the years after his [Las Casas’] death, 
when the power of Spain was the nightmare of Eu- 
rope, that the various tracts, in which the Apostle 
had exaggerated the sufferings of the Indians, for 
the purpose of securing their alleviation, were greed- 
ily seized upon by Spain’s numerous enemies as af- 
fording a true picture of conditions in the Spanish 
colonies. They made excellent propaganda, and were 
used to the limit of their possibilities. Thus the 
most permanent result of the work of the Apostle 
was not the accomplishment of the end he had in 
view, but rather the perpetuation of the legend of 
Spanish cruelty.” This legend clearly accounts for 
the difference in the estimates of Las Casas with 
which we began this paper. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


The earliest biographies of Las Casas were written by 
two friars of his own Order: REMESAL, in his Historia 
general de las Indias etc. (Madrid, 1619), and DAvILA Y 
PapiILtLA, Historia de la Fundacién y Discurso de la 
Provincia de Santiago de Mexico (Madrid, 1596; Brus- 
sels, 1625). QUINTANA in his Vidas de Espanoles célebres 
(Madrid, 1837) writes a panegyric of the great Domini- 


152 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


can. Cf. FaBre, Vida de Las Casas, in the Coleccion de 
Documentos inéditos, t. Ixx (Madrid, 1895); ORTUETA, 
Fray Bartolomé de Las Casas (Madrid, 1920). The best 
guide to the ever-increasing literature on Las Casas is 
GRACE GARDNER GRIFFIN’S Writings on American His- 
tory, which is published annually by the American His- 
torical Association. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON LAS CASAS AND HIS WRITINGS 


Up to the year 1880, W1Nnsor’s Narrative and Critical 
History of America may be trusted for bibliographical 
references to the literature on Las Casas’s writings. Use- 
ful information will be found in BrEcKEr, La Politica 
Espanola en Las Indias (Madrid, 1920). The voluminous 
collection, Documentos ineditos de Indias, contains many 
documents on Las Casas and his historical compositions. 
The most recent evaluation of his works will be found in 
WALDMAN, Americana: the Literature of American His- 
tory (New York, 1926). 


BARONIUS (1538-1607) 


Very Rev. THomMas PLAssmMaANN, O.F.M., PH.D., S.T.D. 
St. Bonaventure’s College and Seminary, Allegany, N. Y. 


N language no less forceful than truthful, the 
Anglican Bishop, Montagu, pledged to Cesare 
Baronio the title of Father of Modern Church 

History when he declared that the great Annalist 
had accomplished his work “ plane novo et inaudito 
exemplo ab omni retro antiquitate, heroico conatu 
et praedicando.”* In other words, Baronius broke 
with the past; he set out to write the universal His- 
tory of the Church according to an entirely new 
plan, and with prodigious learning and heroic en- 
ergy carried out his plan. Hence it is that the “ An- 
nales Ecclesiastici”’ stand on the verge of the six- 
teenth century like a great archway which not only 
overtowers in its colossal magnitude the entire past 
but opens straight and wide into the vast field of 
Modern Church History. The astounding fact is 
that the twelve great tomes of this work were writ- 
ten single-handed by one man who devoted over two 
score years of his life to this tremendous task. As 
a result the history of the author’s life will be in a 
large measure the history of the book. 


1 Hurter, Nomenclator, III, p. 535. 
153 


154 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


1. His LIFE 


Cesare Baronio was born October 30,” 1538, at 
Sora in the Kingdom of Naples. His parents were 
of noble lineage but not blessed with riches. His 
father, Camillo, was vigorous of character; his 
mother, Portia by name, was of a tender and pious 
disposition. She dedicated her child even before his 
birth to the Blessed Virgin, and when little Cesare, 
at the age of three, was dangerously ill she con- 
firmed her early offering by a vow which her son 
was happy to ratify in after years. Of the many 
virtues which his mother instilled into his tender 
heart, charity towards the poor was undoubtedly 
the most favored and one which lent a special charm 
to the career of her son. 

His biographers tell us of his early love for soli- 
tude and for the charms of nature, and how the 
grand panorama of beautiful Sora was his delight 
in his boyhood days. Perhaps this explains his abid- 
ing love for Art and Poetry of which his sacred 
hymns give ample proof.* But whatever influence 
the natural surroundings of his early days may have 
exercised upon his character, it is above all the very 
marked and almost opposite characteristics of his 
parents, that blended so harmoniously and expres- 
sively in Baronio the man; his strength of will, 
tenacity of purpose, unflinching energy and straight- 

2 This date is found in Baronius’ own hand. See Laemmer, 
De Caesaris B. etc., p. 8. Other biographers give Oct. 31, and 


pall, others Aug. 30. 
. F. Guelfi in Per Cesare Baronio Scritti vari etc., p. 312. 


BARONIUS 155 


forward manner on the one hand, and on the other, a 
tender piety and childlike humility, stayed with him 
to the last. Such were the qualities that in later 
years, St. Philip Neri rejoiced to recognize in young 
Cesare when finally, after submitting him to a long 
and severe test, he singled him out for his life work. 

Cesare studied at Veruli, Naples and Rome. He 
was nineteen when he arrived in the Eternal City 
to continue the study of jurisprudence and little did 
he fancy that here was to be his abode for the rest 
of his life. Cesare loved Rome, and all that he pos- 
sessed in sanctity and learning he attributed to this 
“sedula morum magistra ac literarum.” * 

Not long after his arrival a friend introduced him 
to St. Philip Neri. Almost instantly the indescrib- 
able spell of Rome’s Apostle wrought a complete 
change in young Cesare. With characteristic energy 
he started on the narrow road to perfection and he 
is not known to have ever deviated from it. His 
earnest, straightforward and thorough-going nature 
suffered no alternative and no medium course; 
henceforth an utter contempt for the world and an 
equally strong desire for things spiritual marked 
his every thought and action. So sincere was his 
conversion that, as his first offering to God, he tore 
into shreds all his poems which in his youthful 
years he had taken such delight in composing. 

Then came the struggle for his vocation. He felt 
a strong desire to enter the Order of St. Francis 
either as a Capuchin or as an Observantine. St. 


4 Barnabeo, Vita, I, 1, c, 2, 


156 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Philip bade him wait, and for three long years he 
waited, not without much internal suffering. But his 
spiritual father stood by him and prudently directed 
his energies upon the ardent pursuit of study and 
works of charity. 

His father became furious when he learned of his 
son’s new manner of life, and employed drastic 
measures to change his mind, but to no avail. The 
noble-minded Paravicino received Cesare as tutor 
into his domestic circle until at last the youth was 
satisfied that his vocation was not the religious state 
but the secular priesthood. Meanwhile, the Oratory 
of San Girolamo had so captivated his soul that 
without further hesitation he took the vows of pov- 
erty, of chastity, of obedience to St. Philip, and, to 
satisfy the craving of his inmost soul, the fourth 
vow of humility. When Tonsure and Minor Orders 
were conferred upon him he chose God literally as 
“the portion of his inheritance” and to prove it, 
he tore up the Degree of Doctor of Laws which had 
been awarded to him in spite of his youth. He was 
now twenty-two years of age. Before taking Major 
Orders another severe struggle with his relentless 
father had to be fought but the equally persistent 
son came forth victorious. He was ordained a priest 
in 1564. 

During all these struggles the vigilant eye of St. 
Philip was forced upon Baronius. From their first 
meeting there had grown up between these two men 
the most beautiful relationship. No one has revealed 
to us the words that were spoken at that meeting; 


BARONIUS 157 


most likely they were very few, but from that 
moment their souls were welded together in mutual 
affection and admiration. If we may draw a bold 
parallel, we should surmise that this meeting was 
much alike to the first meeting between the Divine 
Master and St. Peter. Even there, few words were 
exchanged but the Master looked upon Simon Peter 
long and affectionately. And indeed there is a strik- 
ing resemblance between Peter and Baronius in 
character and temperament. Both were impetuous 
and sanguine; enthusiastic almost to a fault; strong- 
willed if not obstinate in striving after what they 
considered to be right, yet docile and pliable as 
children under correction, and withal loyal unto 
death to their masters. 

Philip’s influence over Baronius was overpower- 
ing and irresistible from the first. On one occasion 
the Historian beautifully alludes to this in our 
Saviour’s words: “‘ My father who is in me doth the 
works.” And whatever may have been his own per- 
sonal endowments, certain it is that Baronius, the 
man and the Church Historian, owes much to St. 
Philip. From the very first, Philip knew that his 
disciple was to be ‘“‘a Vessel of Election ” in the 
Church of God, and the more he studied him the 
stronger grew his conviction that he was the man 
of the hour, and that the work which he was plan- 
ning in his own mind could be entrusted to no one 
worthier than Baronius. 

The immediate occasion which shaped Philip’s 
design into a definite resolve was the publication in 


158 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


1559 of the Magdeburg Centuries. In this work, 
Flacius Illyricus and his collaborators had _at- 
tempted to force the battles of the Reformation 
upon the field of history. The Church of Rome, 
they claimed, was not the Church of Christ; not 
the Apostolic Church. The Roman Pontiffs had 
gained their supremacy by intrigues and had delib- 
erately distorted the primitive type of the Church 
which the Reformers, as the legitimate successors of 
the Apostles and the Fathers, were endeavoring to 
reestablish in doctrine, ritual and government. We 
can imagine how such novel tenets must have 
wounded the heart of Rome’s Apostle, St. Philip 
Neri. Not that he felt alarm or that he feared for 
the safety of the Church which he knew was built 
upon the indestructible Rock, but with many promi- 
nent ecclesiastics he feared lest the Little Ones of 
Christ’s Flock suffer scandal, and being a man of 
action he realized that it would not do to stand 
idly by but rather to forge weapons which would 
bear out the Saviour’s prophecy: “‘ And the gates 
of hell shall not prevail against it.” 

By this time he had picked out the man who was 
to wield the new weapon in the conflict. But as was 
his custom, he did not for a long time reveal his 
real objective. One day he summoned “ his Cesare ” 
as he was wont to call him affectionately and said, 
‘““ Cesare, it is my wish that in the sermons which 
you preach to the people, you narrate to them the 
whole history of the Church.” Baronius felt like 
Peter when the Master bade him cast out his net, 


BARONIUS 159 


after fishing all night in vain, and like Peter he 
remonstrated vehemently, but like Peter he also 
obeyed. 

He set out with his wonted energy upon this new 
field of labor and when after two years he had fin- 
ished the proposed course of historical instruction, 
Philip calmly bade him do the same thing over 
again. This happened seven times. In this way, this 
master pedagogue with his wonderful intuition and 
practical sense attained a two-fold object: he forced 
his disciple to penetrate farther and farther into 
the vast field of unexplored historical lore, each 
time coming forth burdened with new but as yet 
ill-ordered material, and he compelled him to pre- 
sent it in simple language appropriate to devout 
listeners in the House of God. Hence the two out- 
standing merits of the Aznals, thoroughness and 
reverence. But Baronius also claimed a gain which 
was all his own; what had been hard and bitter to 
him in the beginning was now converted into su- 
preme delight and joy. He epitomizes the work of 
these years in the preface to the fifth volume where 
he apostrophizes his father, who had then joined 
the Saints in Heaven, as follows: “ This I began in 
obedience to thee, and persevering for thirty years, 
I went through the history of the Church seven 
times.” Had he been acquainted with modern peda- 
gogical methods he would have told us how St. 
Philip had designed for him a rather unique but 
eminently efficient seminar course in which his mind 
was constantly enriched with new information, his 


160 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


judgment sharpened, his vision broadened and his 
heart made to glow with genuine love for the work. 

Possibly such procedure is branded with cynical 
sarcasm by those who proclaim that their standards 
are purely intellectual and that historical truth 
should be sought after with an absolutely unpre- 
possessed mind, yet, whatever the merits of such 
declarations, we owe it to every historian that we 
seek to understand clearly his mind and purpose. 
Many have misread and misjudged the Annals be- 
cause they failed to realize that this work was con- 
ceived and prompted by a Saint, that its contents 
were first explained in simple language in the Ora- 
tory of San Girolamo before the Altar of Eternal 
Truth, and that it was committed to writing by a 
man whose sole aim was the untarnished truth and 
who had a deep appreciation of what in our own 
day the scholarly Cardinal Capecelatro demands of 
the Church historian. On the occasion of the Third 
Centenary of Baronius, this learned Churchman 
wrote: “The History of the Church must soar to 
great heights on the wings of faith, and must be 
written with an intuition so broad and reassuring 
as to make it the history of Divine Providence 
among men. He who writes this history must pene- 
trate this life’s inexpressible mystery by means of 
which the doctrine of our faith and the heresies, 
virtue and vice, peace and persecutions, joys and 
sorrows; all this fabric of good and evil, tends to 
the glory of God. And from this glory as from the 
fountain of all good, there proceeds the onward 


BARONIUS 161 


march of the human race towards truth and charity, 
or rather towards Christ and His Religion.” ° 

It seems to have been Philip’s wish that Baronius 
should not set himself to writing before he had fin- 
ished his seventh course of lectures on Church his- 
tory. This was characteristic of Philip for undoubt- 
edly he judged that as Josue had marched seven 
times around the city of Jericho before launching 
his attack, so Baronius was now prepared to enter 
upon his work. However, confusion filled Baronius’ 
soul when he received the command. He begged, 
remonstrated and entreated his superior to appoint 
in his stead the learned Ottavio Panvinio, but every 
interview ended with the gentle but firm command 
of Philip: “As to the Church History, it is you, 
Cesare, who have to write it.” 

And yet there remained some anxiety in Philip’s 
mind. He knew well that his disciple would shed 
lustre upon Mother Church, and while he ardently 
loved the glory of the House of God, he loved the 
immortal soul of his Cesare not less. The docile 
disciple who had placed his soul in his hands, who 
had been his faithful associate in their earthly para- 
dise, the Oratory, must needs be his associate also 
in the heavenly paradise. And yet he feared lest 
the tremendous labors should extinguish in him the 
spirit of devotion and lest the praises and adulations 
of men should blur the deep humility of his soul. 
How was he to reach his double objective? This 


5 S. Philippo Neri e gli Annali del Baronio, in Per Cesare 
Baronio etc., p. 5. 


162 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


was the problem that confronted Philip. He settled 
it by firmly resolving: first, that the Church His- 
tory must be written and secondly, that the writer 
must become a saint. The former resolution he car- 
ried out with unshaken firmness, the latter with un- 
relenting severity. This alone explains why during 
these years of arduous and unremitting labors, of 
severe sufferings and almost cruel humiliations for 
Baronius, the gentle Philip should have played the 
part of the “ stern exactor ” as his disciple was wont 
to call him. 

In spite of the tremendous burden placed upon 
his shoulders which forced him to search for, to 
collect and work through an unwieldy mass of 
books, documents and manuscripts, hidden away in 
the various libraries of Rome and elsewhere; to 
carry on a large correspondence on historical ques- 
tions; to wait patiently on printers and obstinate 
correctors; to write and rewrite every single line 
of the twelve folio volumes, Baronius was not re- 
lieved of a single community exercise, or his daily 
visits to the sick and the prisons, nor of the duties 
connected with the various offices he held during 
this time. And constantly, his “stern exactor ” 
found new work for him of a most distracting na- 
ture, so much so that the humble disciple was al- 
most scandalized at his spiritual father who so 
tormented him. Cardinal Capecelatro® and Lady 
Amabel Kerr’ have given us vivid descriptions of 


6 The Life of Saint Philip Neri, Il, pp. 1-31. 
7 The Life of Cesare Cardinal Baronius. 


BARONIUS 163 


these years of toil and struggle, and when reading 
these fascinating pages one is constantly put in 
mind of the familiar scene where Peter, drowning, 
cries out in dismay: ‘‘ Domine, salva me,” and 
where the Master gently raises him by the hand 
saying, “‘ Modicae fidei, quare dubitasti? ” It would 
almost seem as if Philip had made the disciple live 
the life of the Church Militant in his own soul be- 
fore he was permitted to write her history. How- 
ever, he attained his double object and the results 
were marvellous in both the book and the writer. 
Without intending it, Baronius set a perennial mon- 
ument to his humility and obedience when he wrote 
on the chimney-piece in the kitchen at Vallicella: 
Baronius Coquus perpetuus. It forcefully reminds 
us of another parallel in history, Petrus Piscator. 
And later when the whole world, popes, princes, and 
scholars of all the nations, sang his praises, Philip 
alone remained silent. The only reward he extended 
to the man whom the world acclaimed as the Parens 
Historiae Ecclesiasticae was: “‘ Go and serve thirty 
masses.” Perhaps the historian’s heart was wounded, 
but still he understood his master. Such is the way 
of the saints. When Philip’s end was near, he called 
his disciple to his bedside and said, ‘‘ Cesare, you 
have a great many reasons for thinking lowly of 
yourself and the chief of them is that you have 
written the Annals; for you know it was not by 
your own industry and toil that you wrote them, 
but by the singular grace of God.” And Baronius 
replied: “ Yes, my dearest father, I know it well; 


164 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


all that I have written I owe to God and to your 
prayers.” These touching words which remind’ us 
so much of a similar conversation on the shore of 
the lake of Galilee, was repeated three times by 
both master and disciple. 

Before speaking of the Annals in detail it is well 
to mark the chief events of the historian’s life. 
Having been promoted to the Holy Priesthood in 
1564, he was given charge of the Church of St. 
John the Baptist of the Florentines where he per- 
formed his pastoral duties with his wonted fervor 
and energy. When in 1575 the Oratory was offi- 
cially established at the Church of Santa Maria in 
Vallicella, Baronius was transferred thither. This 
appointment afforded him great spiritual joy, espe- 
cially when in 1583 St. Philip was commanded by 
the Pope to take up his residence at the new Ora- 
tory. It was during his residence at Santa Maria in 
Vallicella that Baronius, under the vigilant eyes of 
St. Philip put forth several smaller writings as well 
as the revised Martyrology and the first five vol- 
umes of the Aznals. Baronius remained at the Ora- 
tory until 1593. In that year Philip resigned as 
Superior of the Congregation and Baronius, after 
his usual vehement remonstrances, was finally in- 
duced to take his place. Pope Clement VIII ap- 
pointed him in 1595 his Confessor. It seems that 
whenever Baronius was forced into an office at the 
risk, as he thought of his humility, he generally 
found an ingenious way of taking revenge by ob- 
taining some spiritual favor. This time the revenge 
consisted in demanding of the Pontiff the absolu- 


BARONIUS 165 


tion of Henry IV of France. In the same year the 
Pope conferred upon him almost by dint of physical 
force, the insignia of Protonotary Apostolic. In the 
following year Baronius who had thrice refused the 
mitre, had to face what he termed a tragedy, for 
the Pope bestowed upon him under pain of excom- 
munication ‘‘ the dreaded purple.”’ With many tears 
he entreated the Pontiff to allow him to return to 
his beloved Oratory and when he was consistently 
refused he found some relief in taking the vow of 
never aspiring to the Papacy. Later he confessed 
that of all the burdens ever placed upon his shoul- 
ders, the heaviest was the Cardinalate. 

His appointment in 1597 to the office of Librarian 
of the Vatican ° was at least more congenial to his 
nature. But the clouds gathered thickly over his 
head during the two conclaves in 1605. In the sec- 
ond one, following the premature death of Leo XI, 
Baronius’ election seemed a certainty when to his 
great satisfaction the Spanish delegates protested on 
account of the stand Baronius had taken in the 
Sicilian question.® 

The last eleven years of his life Baronius was 
forced to spend at the Papal Court. His many 
duties impeded his literary work, yet he had the 
consolation of seeing the twelfth volume of the 
Annals completed before his holy death which oc- 
curred at the beloved Oratory on June 30, 1607. 

Our common impression of Baronius is, and the 


8 G. Mercati, Per la Storia della Bibliotheca Vaticana, in Per 
Cesare Baronio, pp. 85-178. 

9 F. Ruffini, Perché Cesare Baronio non fu Papa, in Per 
Cesare Baronio, pp. 355-430. 


166 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


preceding as well as the following pages bear it 
out, that he was of a very stern disposition. Some 
authors go so far as to say that he was never 
known to laugh. However this may be, in his cor- 
respondence with intimate friends we find many 
witticisms and humorous pleasantries, which go to 
show that he was capable of occasionally assuming 
a more congenial air.*° 

Enough has been said about his deep piety and 
profound spirituality. The world was not surprised 
when Benedict XIV adorned him with the title of 
‘“‘Venerable.” But if God should please to promote 
the process of his beatification by signs and mira- 
cles, the student of history will always regard the 
Annals as the greatest miracle of this eminent 
“Servus Mariae,” as he would style himself. 


2. His WRITINGS 


Besides the Aznals, Baronius published several 
smaller writings which in their very titles reveal to 
us in some measure what was closest to his heart, 
namely, the Saints and the Popes. As the reader of 
the Annals will readily observe, when the life of a 
saint or the trials of a martyr are to be narrated the 
pen of Baronius waxes eloquent, and one feels that 
he was telling the truth when he wrote: “O Lord, 
behold I come, ready, if Thy grace permitted it, to 

10 See the interesting correspondence between him and Card. 
Fred. Borromeo: A. Ratti (Pius XI), Opuscolo inedito e scono- 


sciuto del Card. Cesare Bar. etc., in Per Cesare Baronio, pp. 178- 
245. 


BARONIUS 167 


testify to the truth of Thy Church with my blood 
rather than with my pen.” 

Hence it was that at the request of friends he 
wrote in 1580 the Vita Gregorit Nazianzent, the 
first fruits of his literary labors, and presented it 
to Pope Gregory XIII."* It seems that a few years 
later he revised this little work, for according to 
his own statement ** he completed it in 1584 as also 
the Vita S. Ambrosu and the Martyrologium Ro- 
manum. The revision of the Martyrology, imposed 
upon him by Pontifical orders, proved to be an un- 
dertaking of painstaking research. Cardinal Sirleto 
and other prominent scholars lent their assistance 
to this task which, when finished, was acclaimed a 
great success, but none of the earlier editions 
and prints satisfied Baronius. At last the edition 
of 1589 by Platinus of Antwerp met with his ap- 
proval.** 

Amid all his labors Baronius found time to wield 
his pen in defense of the Papacy. It could not be 
otherwise, for his devotion to the Successor of Peter 
was at once profoundly spiritual and thoroughly 
practical. The man who daily visited St. Peter’s 
where he could be seen to pour out his soul before 
the ‘“‘ Confessio”” and reverently kiss the foot of 
the bronze statue of the Prince of the Apostles; 
who had taken a vow never to aspire to the Papacy 
and yet wanted to die facing an image of the 

11 Laemmer, De Caesaris Baronit Lit. Commercio Diatriba, 
pp. 8, 55. 


12 Laemmer, op. cit., p. 8. 
18 Laemmer, op. cit., pp. 8, 53, 62, QI. 


168 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Apostles, and the name “ Papist ” to be written on 
his tombstone; such a one could not remain 
silent when the rights of the Vicar of Christ were 
attacked. It has been rightly said that, “‘ Loyalty to 
the Church and devotion to the Holy See was the 
key-note of his life.” ** The author’s unalterable if 
not defiant attitude in this regard was the principal 
reason why the Annals aroused such ire among his 
enemies. Pits observes, not altogether unjustly, “ It 
should have been called, the Annals of the papal 
power rather than the Annals of the Church.” * 
And yet, notwithstanding his strong sentiments and 
convictions, Baronius never allowed his judgment 
to be swayed in discussing the rights of the Holy 
See on the merits of historical facts or documents. 
Instances of this are his Tractatus de Monarchia 
Sicula, Paraenesis ad Rempublicam Venetam and 
Votum contra Rempublicam Venetam which were 
written to set forth the rights of the Holy See in 
its litigations with Spain and Venice, respectively. 
While setting forth with remarkable force and lu- 
cidity the relations between Church and State these 
treatises may be considered, as Professor Guelfi 
remarks, ‘“‘ model historical monographs.” *° 

Naturally these smaller writings, but especially 
the Martyrology, retarded the progress of the An- 
nals, upon which Baronius spent his best years and 

14 Kerr, op. cit., p. 353. 

15 Kerr, op. cit., p. 338. 

16 F. Filomusi-Guelfi, Su alcuni punti delle dottrine filoso- 


phiche e giuridiche del Card. Ces. Bar., in Per Cesare Baronio, 
PP. 313, 315, Sqq. 


BARONIUS 169 


best efforts. Capecelatro tells us that St. Philip had 
charged his disciple with the task of lecturing ex- 
clusively on Church history as early as 1559, which 
is the date of the publication of the Magdeburg 
Centuries. From this we may infer that Baronius 
devoted almost fifty years of his life to the study of 
Church history. He himself informs us that he gave 
seven such courses of conferences, but it is not cer- 
tain at what time he actually started work on the 
Annals. Tiraboschi*‘ and others state that he began 
this work as early as 1568. In a letter to Cardinal 
Sirleto, dated May 16, 1577,*° Baronius speaks defi- 
nitely of his plan to write the entire history of the 
Church, and in a letter dated April 25, 1579, he 
joyfully informs his father that the first volume is 
completed but that for various reasons it cannot be 
printed immediately.*® It came from the press in 
1588. St. Philip had ordered him to put out one 
volume each year. This order was fairly well car- 
ried out up to the seventh volume, which appeared 
in 1596, but it took the Cardinal the remaining 
eleven years of his life to bring out the last five 
volumes of the work. 

Historians have often wondered how Baronius, 
although he worked, as Cave puts it, “ with ada- 
mantine courage and superhuman labor,’ *° was 
able to master and keep in order the “ mare mag- 
num et spatiosum ” of the material gathered during 


17 Storia della Letteratura Ital., VII, I, p. 363. 
18 Laemmer, op. cit., p. 46. 

19 Laemmer, op. cit., p. 48. 

20 Kerr, op. cit:, p. 337. 


170 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


all these years. In a valuable contribution to the 
collection of writings published at the third cen- 
tenary of the Annalist, our gloriously reigning Pon- 
tiff throws some interesting side-lights on his method 
of working.*’ The eminent writer acquaints us with 
an unpublished Italian treatise, probably written 
about 1595, in which Baronius tells his friend Car- 
dinal Frederico Borromeo that he was in the habit 
of taking down notes “in un indice confuso.” We 
are further advised that Cardinal Borromeo saw 
this remarkable note-book which he calls, ‘‘ volumen 
quoddam inconditum.” His comment upon it is in- 
teresting inasmuch as it allows us at least to catch 
a glimpse of Baronius’ workshop. Setting Baronius 
up as an example, he continues, ‘‘ qui vel instinctu 
divino, vel admonitu fortasse cujuspiam, quo pri- 
mum tempore ad Ecclesiasticam MHistoriam ani- 
mum adjecit, notaverat, exceperatque multa, et volu- 
men quoddam inconditum rerum diversarum sibi 
praepararat, cujus quotidie crescente mole, potuit 
deinde ditissimus copiosissimusque videri, sicuti 
vere erat.” ”? 

The style of Baronius is the candid expression of 
his soul. One feels that his pen is impelled by that 
‘“‘carita serafica”? to which his Italian biographers 
refer so often, and yet withal his language is simple, 
direct, unlabored and dignified. The text of his 
works is saturated with Biblical quotations, allu- 
sions and sentiments, but these are always appro- 
priate and never descend to merely puerile inven- 


21 A. Ratti, op. cit., pp. 181, 237, sqq. 7? Jbid., p. 231. 


BARONIUS 171 


tions. Frequently one is at a loss whether to marvel 
at his profound and comprehensive knowledge of 
Holy Scripture, or at his dexterity in crystallizing 
with a scriptural phrase his own intimate and per- 
sonal appreciation of a historical event or period.” 
Baronius chose the chronological and annalistic 
form of presentation for very definite reasons. Cer- 
tainly this method of writing had serious disad- 
vantages but we cannot agree with Fueter,’* who, 
without taking the trouble of investigating those 
reasons, dismisses the subject summarily by blam- 
ing the great historian for having opened the way 
to what he terms, ‘‘ die Moderne Vertuschungs- 
methode.” Even a casual glance at the situation 
should have convinced him that if the Annals were 
to be an answer to the Centuries, period for period, 
then the arrangement of the Annals naturally had 
to have the general outline of the Centuries. This, 
Baronius has done with scrupulous consistency. 
And there is the difference between the two works. 
Lady Amabel Kerr writes, ‘‘ The one object he had 
in view was to bring to light by this chronological 
chain of ungarbled facts, the evident and undeni- 
able existence, from the beginning, of one unfailing 
Church under one visible and supreme head.” *° 


23 Some of his Biblical allusions have almost become prover- 
bial. Thus, when asked who were his helpers on the Annals, he 
replied: “ Torcular calcavi solus.” He had intended to call his 
twelfth volume “ Benoni” on account of the great strain he suf- 
fered while compiling it, but he adds in a more cheerful vein, 
Now I shall call it ‘“‘ Benjamin, Paulo nostro jam in dextera 
collocatus.” 

24 Geschichte der Neueren Historiographie, pp. 263-265. 

25 Od. cit., p. 76. 


172 CHURCH -HISDORIANS 


If by the rather obscure term, “ Vertuschungs- 
methode,” Fueter means the obscuring of facts and 
dates, then certainly Baronius is not guilty for it 
was just the opposite that he intended and accom- 
plished. We do not maintain that Baronius’ method 
would be suitable in modern historiography, yet we 
cannot deny the truth of what Cardinal Capecelatro 
has to say on this head. “‘ Chronology,” he writes, 
‘““removes the obscurity which hangs round many 
events; it puts together the disjoined, scattered 
members of the body of history and gives it its due 
form and proportions.” *° 

Baronius looked upon everything from a spiritual 
viewpoint. Divine Providence was for him the su- 
preme law and as he faithfully recorded, day by 
day, and year by year, the “‘ Mirabilia Dei” and 
the glorious names of Saints and Christian scholars, 
not of course without their shadows and counter- 
parts, he must have felt a supreme delight in the 
Saviour’s prophecy, ‘“ Behold, I am with you all 
days.” In this sense the Annals may be termed, as 
Professor Guelfi *’ suggests, a Philosophy of Church 
History. 

In his preface to the first volume,” the author 
describes in his own direct and forceful way the 
name and scope of the Annals. He calls his work 
advisedly, Annales, and not Historia because the 
former term is consecrated by ancient usage, and 


SOD 5 Ct... 414, 

22° OD. cit., D. 313. 

i We quote from the Annales Ecclesiastici (ed. Venice, 1705 
sqq.). 


BARONIUS 173 


introduces the story of the Ancient Church wherein 
truth needs no apology or vindication. He choses 
this plan and method because it is more in con- 
formity with the Saviour’s words: “Sit sermo 
vester, est, est, non, non, quod autem his abun- 
dantius est, a malo est.” 

One cannot forego the pleasure of quoting the 
following sentence which we believe comes straight 
from Baronius’ heart and reveals to us his own per- 
sonal conception of the subject: “‘ Et quod eccle- 
siasticam majestatem ac gravitatem maxime decet 
dicendi genus sectantes; quae dicenda sunt, sancte, 
pure, sincereque absque ullo prorsus fuco, vel fig- 
mento, prout gesta sunt, per annos singulos degesta 
narrabimus.” *° 

In the matter of sources, Baronius revealed a 
true historical instinct. He searched for history 
everywhere: friend or foe, stone or parchment, 
sacred objects or secular; all were alike to him as 
long as they could serve him as trustful witnesses 
of the past. His first endeavor was, as F. Barnabeo 
tells us, to study and collate all the historians that 
had ever written before him. We can appreciate the 
tremendous difficulty of this task when we remem- 
ber that there existed no universal history of the 
Church before Baronius, but that he had to cull his 
information from an almost infinite variety and 
multiplicity of chronicles, manuscripts and _ frag- 
ments. 

With holy avidity he perused the Acts of the 


oY Tod, 


174 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Martyrs, for they were an inspiration to his fervor 
and zeal. ‘‘ I quoted them at full length,” he writes, 
“out of reverence for such antiquity, though I 
know that I run the risk of being accused of pro- 
lixity.” *° Fueter ** misses this point entirely when 
he accuses Baronius of intentionally thereby divert- 
ing the attention of the reader from the main point. 
This is a crude insinuation when we know the true 
motive and remember that every drop of blood shed 
for our Holy Faith was sacred in the eyes of the 
writer, who sedulously gathered up all the fragments 
that told the wonderful story. 

He next turned to the Fathers of the Church, 
both Greek and Latin. When he started, his lin- 
guistic knowledge was very limited, but as he toiled 
along he acquired no small proficiency in the Greek 
tongue, and even had the courage to acquaint him- 
self with Hebrew in order to master the original 
text of the Old Testament. 

He studied profane history with deep interest, 
especially the many chronicles bearing on the his- 
tory of Italy, and anything pertaining to the Holy 
Roman Empire. The City of Rome offered Baronius 
ample opportunities for archaeological studies. Pos- 
sibly for the first time, were many ancient monu- 
ments, arches, buildings, columns, and coins called 
upon to mingle their silent voices with the trium- 
phant strains, not of the Caesars, but of the Naza- 
rene. Day after day, Baronius wended his way to 


80° Kerr, op. cit., p. 77. 
81 Geschichte der Neueren Historiographie, p. 264. 


BARONIUS 175 


the Roman libraries. If he had no other merit than 
that of rendering accessible to the world the wealth 
of information gathered from the manuscripts of 
the Vatican library and the archives of St. Angelo, 
he would have earned the world’s gratitude.** Nor 
was he satisfied with the written word. In search 
for the truth he enlisted the counsel of men who, 
he knew, could enlighten him, among them, Pietro 
Morino, Jacopo Sismondo, Cardinal Sirleto, Nich- 
olas Faber of Paris, Henry Gravius of Louvain, 
F. Soria, S.J., and Fronto Ducaeus. A great bulk 
of correspondence left after him,** reveals the fact 
that frequently he wrote lengthy monographs either 
to elucidate a point for the benefit of an inquirer, 
or to ascertain another’s opinion on a matter of 
doubt. 

The critical value of the Annals is naturally rela- 
tive. Gauged by contemporary standards, however, 
the work is far ahead of its time. Historiography 
has progressed much since the days of Baronius, 
but that has nothing to do with what may be termed 
the absolute critical value of any book of any age, 
and this value does not deteriorate in spite of any 
scientific progress, provided the author has the will, 
the means and the ability to tell the whole truth. 

Baronius started out and persevered with the un- 
shaken will to find and write the truth. No critic 
has ever succeeded in convicting him of garbling a 
single date or fact. On the contrary, he generously 


32 Mercati, op. cit., passim. 
33 See the collections of Albericius, Laemmer and Ratti. 


176 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


invited both friend and foe to criticize his work in 
accordance with St. Augustine’s axiom: “‘ Verum et 
severum diligo correctorem meum.” His constant 
request to his at times rather eager critics was: 
“Touch boldly, speak freely, and know that you 
will thereby give me real pleasure.” The solution 
of chronological intricacies afforded him perhaps the 
greatest natural pleasure that his austere tempera- 
ment would allow him to indulge in. It may be 
truly said that the Historica Veritas was never com- 
mitted to a trustier charge than to this eminent Ora- 
torian whose sincere, frank, straightforward nature 
shrank from the very suggestion of an untruth and 
whose inmost heart constantly breathed the prayer, 
‘““ Domine, ne auferas de ore meo verbum veritatis 
usquequaque.” ** 

His passionate love for truth coupled with his 
severe and unyielding disposition made him a for- 
midable opponent. Casaubon expresses it well in the 
phrase, “‘ Gigantem istum debellare.” *° And yet it 
was the same love for truth that made him at once 
so humble and so charitable. This explains how 
both through the written word and personal contact 
he made many converts to the faith.*® 

In Fueter’s *’ opinion the Annals do not mark any 
progress beyond the critical standards created by 
the Humanists, though he admits that Baronius re- 


34 In an intimate letter to Card. F. Borromeo he remarks 
casually: “non ho mai havuto animo di adulare.” Ratti, op. cit., 
Pp. 245. 

85 N. Festa, Note per un capitulo della biografia d’Isacco 
Casaboun, in Per Cesare Bar., p. 292. 

36 Hurter, Nomenclator, p. 534. Mt ODp. cit., loc? cate 


BARONIUS 177 


veals closer contact with the methods of the school 
of Blondus than did the Centuriators. Objectively 
speaking, this declaration attaches no blame to 
Baronius or to the Magdeburg editors, for it stands 
to reason that monumental works of this kind must 
necessarily depend upon the monographic studies 
that have preceded them. Without such, our mod- 
ern historiography could not have stepped beyond 
even sixteenth century standards. And yet the same 
Fueter has only scant praise for the great outstand- 
ing merit of the Aznals, which raises their value 
high above all contemporary writings, namely, the 
careful and abundant use of the wealth of hitherto 
unpublished documents. 

Here it must be stated that Baronius does not by 
any means employ his sources indiscriminately. 
Many, indeed, have sneered at the large number of 
errors that modern criticism has discovered in the 
Annals, but few have pointed out the astounding 
array of errors detected by Baronius in the sources, 
old and new, that he had to collate and master 
single-handed. Fueter reluctantly admits his careful 
scrutiny of modern and medieval sources, but seems 
to take for granted a lack of criticism in reference to 
the early Christian writers. This statement sounds 
almost ridiculous when we read the instructive ar- 
ticle, ‘‘ Eusebio guidicato dal Baronio ” by Profes- 
sor Benjamino Satoro.** As this writer points out, 
the Annalist traces, with merciless logic, error upon 
error and marks them with language which is by 

388 In Per Cesare Baronio, pp. 331-353. 


178 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


no means complimentary to the Father of Church 
History, such as, ‘“‘multa mentitus est,” “ corri- 
gendus est Eusebius,” and even goes so far as to 
accuse him of a “turpe mendacium” or a “ dolus 
malus.” His love for truth no less than his criti- 
cal judgment are especially apparent when he cor- 
rects Eusebius in reference to Constantine the 
Great, the first Christian Emperor, who is the lead- 
ing figure in Volume III of the Annals, and who 
in his Eusebian dress would have lent himself won- 
derfully to a grand picturization of the ideal Chris- 
tian Ruler. Since this volume was dedicated to 
Philip II, Baronius would have welcomed such an 
opportunity had he been a dramatist and not a his- 
torian. What Eusebius had passed by in silence 
Baronius stigmatizes as ‘‘ dolendum facinus.” In 
this connection Baronius lays down in forceful and 
characteristic language what appears to have been 
his ruling principle throughout his work, namely 
that it is far from his mind to write apologies or 
cover vice with false excuses, lest, ‘‘ privatus affec- 
tus nos in sinuosos impellat anfractus,” and he con- 
tinues, “sed recto tramite, via regia ac libera in- 
cedentes praevia veritate, quae ipsa ingerit, quae 
sola monet ac docet, nostris scriptis tantummodo 
complectemur.” *® However, we cannot blame him 
for not feeling justified in questioning the authen- 
ticity of the pseudo-Isidorian decretals, for after all 
Blondel’s famous reply to Torres appeared only 
twenty-one years after Baronius’ death. As to the 
39 Annales, III, 84. 


BARONIUS 179 


celebrated Donatio Constantini Baronius resolutely 
declares the traditional text of the document cor- 
rupt. This was an important step in advance when 
we realize that only in the nineteenth century was 
sufficient evidence found to disprove the authenticity 
of the document. 

Baronius also rejects the correspondence between 
Seneca and St. Paul on the authority, not of Eras- 
mus and the Centuriators, but of abundant intrinsic 
and extrinsic evidence of his own finding.*® With 
remarkable ingenuity he traces not only the proofs 
against its genuineness but also the reasons for the 
long-standing popularity of these letters. 

Always ready to yield to the verdict of historical 
truth Baronius surrenders even those traditions 
which had entwined themselves with the faith of 
his forefathers. However, he does not employ the 
iconoclastic methods of the Centuriators, but rather 
proceeds with due reverence for those who in ages 
past may have found inspiration and spiritual com- 
fort in such traditions. A characteristic example is 
the fictitious correspondence between Christ and 
King Abgar. While the Centuriators firmly cling to 
its genuineness, Baronius, after giving the letters in 
full, and clearly pointing out their doubtful origin, 
adds with his characteristic tactfulness, that he 
thought it wise to embody them “ tum nequid lec- 
torem praetereat; tum etiam ne ea quis omnino 
contemnenda existimet, quae majores complures 
venerati esse noscuntur.” ** 


40 Ad annum, 66, xi, xii, xiii. 41 Ad annum, 31, Ix. 


180 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


The merits of the Annals are probably seen to 
their best advantage if gauged in relation to the 
Magdeburg Centuries. No one will gainsay that the 
latter work gave a powerful impetus to historical 
research and that it was responsible at least indi- 
rectly for a striking array of historical works writ- 
ten either in refutation or confirmation. It would 
not be presumptuous, however, to say that its great- 
est merit lay in bringing about the writing of the 
Annals of Baronius. The material accumulated and 
arranged in the order of centuries by the several 
authors of the Protestant work should not be under- 
estimated; yet it stands no comparison with the 
wealth of hitherto unknown and most valuable in- 
formation that was sifted, sorted, and synthesized 
by Baronius single-handed. In the matter of histori- 
cal material the usefulness of the Centuries has 
long since spent itself, while the Annals have proved 
their permanent and abiding value to this day. So 
true is this that even Protestant writers have no 
hesitation in calling it, ‘‘ Eine Fundgrube kirchen- 
historischen Wissens.” *? As to the critical value of 
either, Fueter ** declares that the Centuries mark a 
step backward in every regard, while the Annals 
hardly mark a step forward. What he really means 
is that the Catholic historian was incapable of mov- 
ing forward owing to his religious convictions. If 
religious convictions constitute an impediment to 
critical judgment, then we certainly must not look 


42 C. Mirbt in Realencyklopedie f. prot. Th. und Kirche, 
Ss. V. 
43 Op. cit., loc. cit. 


BARONIUS 181 


for it in Baronius nor for that matter in the Cen- 
turiators. But the real question at issue is to what 
extent these writers allow their religious beliefs to 
influence the treatment of their subject. Baronius, 
it is true, does walk along the royal highway, as 
he terms it, in the broad mid-day sun of his faith 
and gathers up with childlike eagerness and deep 
reverence, the fragments of the past scattered by 
the roadside. But never does he consciously beguile 
himself or others into error, and that, after all, is 
the most important requisite in a historian. On the 
other hand, it is admitted by friend and foe that 
the Centuriators under the spell of the destructive 
culter Flacianus wilfully garbled historical facts 
and evaluated all sacred traditions, miracles, relics, 
etc., by the standard of their religious tenets; if 
these favored their anti-papist tendencies, they were 
true and genuine; if not, they were relegated among 
the ‘‘ signa mendacia.” Baronius never attacks them 
openly, his policy was rather to let the facts speak 
for themselves. Yet, occasionally he betrays his feel- 
ings in such remarks as, “‘ the Centuries of Satan ” 
or ‘ quaecumque ignorant, blasphemant.” ** 

It stands to reason, of course, that the Centuria- 
tors had a more difficult task before them. The 
burden of their thesis was to prove that from the 
sixth century down, the Church of Christ had gone 
wrong and that its default was due, not to a natural 
development of things but to the wicked machina- 
tions of men. Had they been schooled in modern 


44 Apparatus ad ann., 96. 


182 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


rationalism their task might have been easier and 
the usefulness of their work might have reached at 
least the threshold of modern criticism. As it is, 
their children being much wiser than they, charge 
them with confessional fanaticism and look upon 
their tremendous efforts as an interesting but value- 
less relic of the past. 

Baronius, however, appeals even to the modern 
world for the dignity, earnestness and solidity of 
his work. In spite of the superhuman efforts de- 
manded by his colossal undertaking, his was the 
easier task. As Fueter *° very naively remarks, “ he 
had to do less violence to the sources, because the 
Fathers of the Church can more easily be harmo- 
nized with Catholic doctrine than with the Protes- 
tant beliefs.” But had Fueter perused the corre- 
spondence between Baronius and Father Talpa and 
his other confréres at Naples, he might have had 
reason to admire the most scrupulous and pains- 
taking accuracy employed by Baronius in every 
single quotation from the Fathers,*® and perhaps he 
would not have dismissed the subject with the hasty 
predicate, “‘ ganz kritiklos.” 

There is another aspect of the question in which 
Baronius occupies a more advantageous position 
than his opponents. It was their purpose to show 
that all the defects in the Church since the sixth 
century proved a departure from the original type, 
and tended towards a novel organization conceived 


45 Op. cit., loc. cit. 
46 Kerr, op. cit., p. 104; Laemmer, p. 82. 


BARONIUS 183 


by human selfishness or, as Casaubon terms it, 
“ Romani Papae tyrannis.” *’ They further pro- 
ceeded to show that the Reformation of the six- 
teenth century was patterned after the old Church 
and was linked directly to the sixth century. Ba- 
ronius started out with the conviction that “evils 
must come” in the Church of God; that they are a 
natural outgrowth of an organism which consists of 
a human as well as a Divine element. In other 
words, he simply sought for the truth, whether good 
or evil, while the Centuriators were bound to find 
evil, whether it was there or not. Thus it happened 
that where his critics suspected formidable snares 
for him and causes for self-deceit, there precisely lay 
his greatest strength. The reason was because they 
did not grasp his lofty and yet very practical con- 
cept of the Church; they forgot that for the picture 
he was designing of the Bride of Christ, he needed 
both light and dark colors; that every dark spot in 
her history served him as another proof of her 
supernatural character, of the abiding presence of 
Christ in His Church and of the power of Divine 
Providence. 

What gives the Amnals a special charm is the tone 
of humility and reverence that marks every sentence 
of the great work. It seems as if the saying of St. 
Philip had at all times resounded in the author’s 
ears, “‘ God does not need men.” Baronius consid- 
ered himself a worthless tool in the hands of the 
Great Architect who built the Church whose history 

47 See his Diary, in N. Festa, op. cit., p. 293. 


184 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


he was writing. His zeal may have at times prompted 
him to point out the finger of God in certain things 
which may easily admit of a natural explanation, 
but never did the same zeal beguile him deliberately 
to falsify or misinterpret a single iota. If the latter 
were true we should have to accuse Baronius of 
blind partisanship; the former makes him guilty of 
nothing else than an ardent devotion to the Church 
of Christ. For the rest, the errors and mistakes that 
historical critics have discovered in the Annals of 
Baronius must be ascribed to the tremendous diffi- 
culties with which the undertaking was beset. 

A work that contains the best and most com- 
prehensive criticism of Baronius and which should 
always be found with the Aznals, is the Critica 
Historico-Chronologica of the two eminent sons 
of St. Francis, Anthony Pagi, O.M.C., and his 
nephew, Francis Pagi, O.M.C. It is prefaced by a 
eulogy of the Annalist whose sole aim was “ quae 
una primum est Historicae decus ac lumen, Veri-— 
tas.” Furthermore the author remarks with good 
sense, “‘ Haerent, vel post supremam artificis manum, 
tersissimis quibusque artis operibus, sui naevi.” 

How different is the criticism of Fueter! A few 
of his statements will suffice to reveal the spirit that 
prompted him. According to Fueter,** Baronius 
found all the institutions of the Catholic Church set 
down in the Gospel accounts. Thus the Confession 
of Peter is given as the unchangeable type of Gen- 
eral Councils. But when we read the Annals, it is 


48 Op. cit., loc. cit. 


BARONIUS 185 


altogether different.“ After a clear explanation of 
the momentous event based upon the Biblical texts 
and Josephus, Baronius begs his readers to pause 
for a while and take note: “ Ejusmodi namque tanti 
ponderis et auctoritatis actio Christi, typum quem- 
dam exprimit celebrandi concilium.” The reader 
who agrees that the Confession of Peter was not a 
mere exchange of compliments but an act of far- 
reaching results, will readily admit that Baronius’ 
point is well taken and that his mild inference is 
based on sound exegesis and good reasoning. To say 
the least a “typus quidam ” is by no means “ ein 
unveraenderliches Muster.” 

Again, Fueter makes Baronius infer from the 
ceremonies at St. Stephen’s death that the com- 
memoration of the thirtieth day is based upon Apos- 
tolic tradition, and that these ceremonies prove in- 
directly the Apostolic origin of the belief in Purga- 
tory. Baronius treats of this matter not in section 
308 as Fueter surmises, but in sections 313 and 
314.°° Furthermore there is question, not of the 
thirtieth day, as Fueter again falsely imagines, but 
the seventieth day. Had Fueter taken the trouble to 
read the Annals carefully he would have found that 
Baronius draws the inference not from the Bible but 
rather from the accumulative testimony of the first 
four centuries, and that even then, notwithstanding 
the long array of witnesses, he is contented with the 
cautious remark, ‘‘ Apostolica traditione in ecclesia 
etiam consuetudo illa probata videtur.” 


49 Ad annum, 33, xvi, xvii. 50 Ad annum, 34. 


186 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


With regard to the belief in Purgatory Baronius 
says this, ‘Res enim est non recens in ecclesia 
adinventa sed quae ex eisdem apostolicarum tra- 
ditionum fontibus manat.’’ He then proceeds to 
prove his assertion with an astounding wealth of 
quotations from T ertullian, St. Cyprian, Origen, St. 
Epiphanius, St. Chrysostom, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 
St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Jerome, St. Ambrose, St. 
John Damascene, and above all from St. Augustine. 
Whoever reads these testimonies carefully need not 
make a “salto mortale,” as Fueter insinuates, in 
order to be convinced that, after all, there is some 
truth in St. Augustine’s words, ‘‘ Hoc enim a patri- 
bus traditum universa tenet ecclesia.” 

There is a feeling of well-merited satisfaction in 
the preface to the twelfth volume. ‘‘ Behold,” the 
Annalist writes, “‘ with God’s help, we are about to 
bring into the church the twelfth volume of the 
Annals. It has been our endeavor that these twelve 
tomes, one and all, should endure like unto twelve 
columns adorned with writing and which, being 
grounded on the firmness of truth, should preserve 
intact the Church against the unremitting strokes of 
her persecutors, while at the same time, by the 
writing which is upon them, they proclaim every- 
where in God’s vast Kingdom His glory which must 
not pass into oblivion but rather must be set forth 
upon thousands of monuments and sung by the 
tongues of men and angels for all eternity.” 

In a large measure this prophecy has been ful- 
filled. Baronius avoided the mistake of his antago- 


BARONIUS 187 


nists who had raised thirteen columns of support 
along the outer walls of the Church, feigning that 
the clerestory of the edifice was about to collapse. 
Baronius proved himself a more expert architect. 
In what his antagonists had pointed out as faulty 
workmanship, Baronius saw the well-defined de- 
sign, no matter whether in the course of centuries 
it bore the stamp of the Basilica, the Romanesque, 
the Gothic or Renaissance style; and trusting in 
the solidity of the massive walls he calmly set about 
his work, and starting from the very sanctuary he 
moved down the spacious nave and built his mighty 
columns, one by one, reaching from the solid foun- 
dation to the highest arches of the edifice. And while 
today his columns stand firm and solid, the work of 
his opponents has gradually crumbled into ruins 
around the walls of the Ancient Church. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


Buccio, Vita (MS., Roman Oratory); H. Sponpé, 
Epitome (Paris, 1612); Gir. BARNABEO, Vita Caesaris 
Baroni (Rome, 1651); Ricci, Vita (Rome, 1745); 
Raym. ALBERIcIus, Ven. Caesaris Baronii . . . Epistolae, 
Opuscula .. . Vita (Rome, 1759-1770); SARRA, Vita del 
Ven. Ces. Baronio (Rome, 1882); LE FEvreE, Vie de Card. 
Baronius (Douai, 1868); R. BAvER, S.J., art. Baronius in 
Kirchenlexikon; C. Mirst, art. Baronius in Realency- 
klopedie fuer Protestantische Theologie und Kirche; 
Lapy AMABEL Kerr, The Life of Cesare Cardinal Ba- 
ronius of the Roman Oratory (London, 1898); A. WHBER, 


188 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


art. Baronius in Kirchl. Handlexikon (Buchberger) ; 
JoHN B. PETERSON, art. Baronius in Cath. Encyclopedia; 
GENEROSO CALENZIO, ORAT., La Vita e gli Scritti del Car- 
dinale Cesare Baronio (Rome, 1907); Per Cesare Ba- 
ronio Scritti Vari nel Terzo Centenario della sua morte 
(Rome, 1911); Huco LAaEmMMeErR, De Caesaris Baronit 
Literarum Commercio Diatriba (Freiburg i. B., 1903). 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON BARONIUS 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


Grr. TrrABoscHi, Storia della Letteratura Italiana 
(Florence, 1805-1813), VII, I, pp. 401-404; ViLLoRosa, 
Memorie etc. (Naples, 1837); ALFONSO CAPECELATRO, 
The Life of St. Philip Neri (trans. by T. A. Pope, Lon- 
don, 1882); II, pp. 1-31; E. Furter, Geschichte der 
Neueren Historiographie (Munich and Berlin, 1911), pp. 
263-265; H. Hurter, S.J., Nomenclator Literarius, II, 
Pp. 526-539; RauscHEN, Jahrbiicher der Christlichen 
Kirche unter dem Kaiser Theodosius dem Grossen: Ver- 
such einer Erneuerung der Annales Ecclesiastici des Ba- 
ronius fir die Jahre 378-395 (Freiburg i. B., 1897); 
PottuastT, I (2nd ed.), xxvii sqq. For adverse criticism 
see: CASAUBON, Exercitationes (Geneva, 1654); cf. Per 
Cesare Baronio (v.s.), pp. 261-294, and Pattison, Jsaac 
Casaubon (Oxford, 1892), pp. 315-341; CAVE, Historia 
Literaria Script. Ecclesiasticorum (London, 1868), xxv- 
xxvi; Dow.inc, Introduction to Critical Study of Ec- 
clesiastical History (London, 1838), pp. 105-128. 

As stated in the text, the Annals were first printed in 
Rome, 1588-1607. Each of the volumes extends over a 
century, the twelfth ending with the year 1198. There are 
several continuators of the Annals, but none brings the 
work down to our age and none equals the original author. 
Among them three Oratorians occupy the first place: 
RAYNALDUS covered the period 1198-1566; LADERCHI, 


BARONIUS 189 


the period 1566-1571; THEINER, the period 1572-1585. 
Another, less valuable, continuation covering the period 
1198-1572 was brought out by the Dominican Bzovtius, 
and a third, 1198-1646, by Bishop Sponpr. There are 
numerous translations and epitomes of the work. The best 
criticism was published by the two Conventuals AN- 
THONY and Francis Pact, Critica historico-chronologica 
in Annales Baroni, 4 vols. (Antwerp, 1705 and 1727). 
The best among the many editions of the Annals are 
those of Mansi (Lucca, 1728-1759, 38 vols.), who in- 
serted Pagi’s corrections and.added a valuable Index, and 
THEINER (Bar-le-Duc, 1864-1883, 37 vols.). 


BOLLANDUS (1596-1665) 


Rev. Francis MANNHARDT, S.J. 
University of St. Louis 


“Die Bollandisten, eroeffneten die gelehrte historische 
Kritik.” FuETER, Geschichte der neueren Historiographie. 


HE modern trend in historical studies has 

often resulted in restating the facts of 

the past. For whatever their theory, all 
scholars are agreed that history must aim to find 
and to spread the truth. This was not always the © 
case. Excepting perhaps Thucydides and Tacitus, 
the Classics saw little difference between history 
and rhetoric,’ while the Middle Ages sought edifi- 
cation and were naive enough to lend belief to every 
written word. If these views differed much from our 
own, they nevertheless invited excuse rather than 
blame. A change came about with the rise of Hu- 
manism,. The spirit of criticism cultivated by Valla 
(+1457), Guicciardini (+1540), and Erasmus 
(+ 1536), meant indeed an advance upon the naive 
credulity of the previous centuries, but was inspired 
by unworthy motives and could never achieve the 
best results. Under the conditions existing at that 
time, it prepared the way for the pseudo-history of 
the following three centuries, which, in spite of all 
its pretensions, has been defined as “‘a conspiracy 


1 Cf. Cic., De leg., 1:2, 5, Orat., 20:66. Quint., Imstit., 10:1, 31. 
Igo 


BOLLANDUS IOI 


against truth.” However, de Maistre spoke of his- 
torical narratives, not of historical studies, for 
challenged by the hostile polemics of Humanists 
and Reformers, Catholic scholars soon recognized 
the need of checking up the writings of their oppo- 
nents. They felt the jarring discords existing be- 
tween traditional accounts and contemporary ob- 
jections, but admitted that the Catholic past had 
been too uncritical in many beliefs to permit them 
to assert without hesitation the historical truth of 
those which were attacked. They had every reason 
to think that honest research would vindicate the 
Church, which was of divine origin and held the 
promise of Christ’s vigilant care, but it was obvious 
that their opponents had to be met on purely his- 
torical grounds. Hence they determined to return to 
the sources, in the interests both of a legitimate de- 
fense and of true scholarship. 

The situation became acute under the stress of 
the Protestant Revolution. It will suffice to mention 
the Magdeburg Centuriators (1559-1574), whose 
partisanship was promptly recognized by their Cath- 
olic contemporaries, but whose pretentious erudition 
misled many. Even Fueter* admits that the attacks 
of the early Protestant writers were based on weak 
foundations, a fact clearly proved by Canisius 
(71597), and Baronius (1607). These contro- 
versies, though regrettable and at times disgusting, 
begot our modern historiography, because under 
their stress much effective work was done for his- 


2 Fueter, lJ. c., p. 311. 


192 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


tory. It is admitted that this was of very unequal 
value and that it was, in general, of the nature of 
preparatory studies and the gathering of material. 
The Annals of Baronius (1588-1593), planned as 
a corrective of the Magdeburg Centuries, had shown 
the need of a fuller disclosure of the sources, and 
their ‘“‘ immediate influence was the creation of a 
new school of Catholic historiography, devoted to 
the publication of source material rather than to 
the actual narrative of Church History.”* The 
leaders of this school were the Maurists and the 
Bollandists, followed by a number of individual 
scholars, such as Muratori (+ 1750), J. S. Assemani 
(7 1768), Tillemont (+ 1698), and Mansi (7 1769). 
The most important work was done by the two 
groups of religious, the Benedictines and the Jesuits, 
not merely because a religious order alone could at 
that time insure the personnel, the organization and 
the sustained effort demanded by a great work, but 
also because it alone could protect its writers against 
the whims of princes and the caprices of the public. 
There is this distinction, however, between the two 
groups, that, whereas the Maurists were interpreters 
rather than critics of the sources, the Bollandists 
were pioneers and leaders in their critical evalua- 
tion. Such is the opinion of a recent writer,* and 
such is the admission of Fueter himself, who, in spite 
of his disdain of Catholic scholarship, is forced to 
admit that the Bollandists inaugurated modern his- 


3 Guilday, lL. c., p. 274. 
# Guilday, /. c., p. 275. Fueter, /. c., p. 312. 


BOLLANDUS 193 


torical criticism. We readily understand, therefore, 
why the name of Bollandus must appear on every list 
of Catholic historians and why a discussion of his 
work must include a brief account of its bearing on 
modern historiography.” 


A. THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 
I. ROSWEYDE 


In speaking of the Acta Sanctorum we may deal 
briefly with historical data, for there is no need to 
repeat a twice-told tale. The original conception of 
the Acta is due to a Belgian Jesuit, Heribert Ros- 
weyde (1569-1629) whose researches in the libraries 
of Flanders had drawn his attention to the glaring 
contrasts existing between the current lives of the 
saints and the readings of the original manuscripts. 
He secured the approval of his superiors as early 
as 1603, but could not propose his scheme to the 
learned until 1607, when he published his Fasti 
Sanctorum quorum vitae in belgicis bibliothecis 
manuscriptae. His plan called for the publication 
of eighteen folio volumes, of which the first three 
were to treat of the feasts of Christ, of the Blessed 
Virgin and of the saints in general, while the last 
three were to contain the necessary notes and disser- 
tations. The bulk of the work was to consist of 
twelve volumes or months, giving the lives of the 
saints, classified according to the calendar. This 
program of eighteen volumes was simple and modest 

5 Fueter, /. c., p. 325. Dunin-Borkowski, l. c., p. 410. 


194 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


if compared to the actual work later published, but 
seemed chimerical to Bellarmine and to many con- 
temporaries. Rosweyde, however, was not discour- 
aged and continued his search for manuscripts. He 
further exemplified his proposal by the publication 
of his Vitae Patrum (1615) for which he used 
twenty-three manuscripts and twenty printed works, 
and to which he added an introduction, notes and 
indexes. His method was, therefore, substantially 
that of the later Bollandists and consisted in the 
gathering of sources, the collation and correction 
of manuscripts, the addition of introductions, notes 
and explanations and the enrichment of the whole 
with pertinent dissertations. It is granted that there 
exists a wide difference between the tentative method 
of Rosweyde, the assured procedure of Bollandus 
and Papebroch and the scientific thoroughness of 
De Smedt and Delehaye, but the difference is one 
of degree, not of principle. How Rosweyde’s ideas 
would have taken concrete shape in the actual pub- 
lication of a volume of the Acta, cannot be known, 
for he died before he had been able to publish a 
single fascicle (1629). 


2. BOLLANDUS 


His vast collections were committed to John Bol- 
landus (1596-1665) then about thirty-four years of 
age, a man of penetrating intellect, marvelous mem- 
ory, prodigious industry and broad sympathies. 
After due reflection, Bollandus determined to adopt 


BOLLANDUS 195 


the plan of Rosweyde but to expand its scope. He 
explained his plan and method in the preface to the 
first volume of January, which preface, it has been 
said, “must always have a place in the history of 
historical method.”°® The Acta Sanctorum were, 
therefore, to provide the best and the amplest ma- 
terial for the student of hagiography; they were to 
include all the saints, even those little known and 
those without a cult; and were accordingly to give 
the full texts of all the manuscripts. It may be 
added, however, that though this last principle was 
ever upheld, it was not always rigidly enforced be- 
fore the nineteenth century. Bollandus intended, fur- 
thermore, that only the best sources were to be used 
in the critical evaluation of the manuscripts; but 
while all necessary information about the origin and 
condition of the text was to be supplied together 
with the necessary critical apparatus, the sources 
were to be published as they were found, including 
even palpable forgeries, fables and apocrypha. Cer- 
tainly an ambitious scheme, which might have been 
utterly wrecked had Bollandus and his Provincial 
fully grasped its implications.’ 

We may abstract from many of the obstacles 
which confronted Bollandus in order to mention 
only three which have since his day been removed 
from the path of the modern scholar. We refer to 
the absence of central libraries and bibliographical 
aids, to the undeveloped state of textual criticism 


6 Collis in Cath. Hist. Rev., l. c., p. 307. 
7 Acta SS., Jan., Vol. I., Praef. c3. 


196 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


and to the necessity of patronage and financial sup- 
port. The last proved to be the least of these diffi- 
culties, for by the liberality of friends, as well as 
by the shrewd business capacity of such men as 
Henschen (71681), and Janninck (+1723), the 
Acta Sanctorum were not exposed to straitened cir- 
cumstances until after the suppression of the Society 
of Jesus in 1773. 

The undeveloped state of textual criticism was a 
more serious difficulty and explains the shortcom- 
ings of the earlier volumes, but its discussion may 
be reserved for a later paragraph. Suffice it to say 
that the very method of Bollandus and his followers 
must be said to have established this science. 

If the dream of Bollandus was not to remain a 
hagiographic Utopia the extensive use of libraries 
was a necessity. But, alas, in the early seventeenth 
century there were few large depositories of books 
similar to our national, municipal and university 
libraries. This meant that the hagiographic material 
was dispersed in countless private libraries, for in- 
stance in those of monasteries and of individual 
scholars. Moreover, there were no catalogues of 
manuscripts and printed works, such as those of 
Potthast and Chevalier; or, if such existed, they 
listed none but the manuscripts of one library and 
were inaccessible except on the spot. There were 
no historical periodicals with bibliographies of local 
saints or current hagiographical publications, such 
as the Catholic Historical Review, the Analecta Bol- 
landiana, and the Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique. 


BOLLANDUS 197 


There were at that time few, if any, collections of 
sources such as those of d’Achéry and Mabillon, 
Muratori and Migne. But Bollandus was an excep- 
tional man, cast in the mould of heroes and of saints. 
As the manuscripts must be used, ways and means 
must be found to reach them. Hence the creation of 
the Bollandist Museum or Library, hence the many 
scientific journeys of his assistants and followers, 
hence the vast scientific correspondence maintained 
with all the learned world. The nucleus of the Bol- 
landist Library was the transcripts of Rosweyde, 
continually and extensively augmented by later 
transcripts, purchases and donations, so much so 
that within fifty years it was the richest hagio- 
graphic library in Europe. During the period of the 
French Revolution it was completely scattered and 
largely destroyed, but it numbers today more than 
fifteen hundred thousand volumes and about six 
hundred periodicals. 

The rapid growth of the Library was a partial 
result of the many journeys undertaken by the Bol- 
landists, who, like the proverbial busy bee, did not 
return from abroad without being heavily laden. 
Abstracting from the shorter expeditions of Ros- 
weyde and Bollandus, these scientific journeys may 
be said to have begun in 1660, when Henschen and 
Papebroch visited the libraries of the Rhineland, 
Bavaria, Austria, Italy and France. Their journey 
of twenty-nine months had enabled them not only to 
acquire an enormous mass of documents, transcribed 
either by themselves or by copyists, but had also put 


198 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


them in touch with local correspondents and with 
the most learned men of that time. At Rome alone 
they garnered a harvest of seven hundred tran- 
scripts. Thus did the Bollandists help to establish 
the modern principle that there is no excuse for ig- 
noring an important manuscript. : 

Because of the many bibliographical aids at the 
service of the modern scholars, not only for general 
but also for local and particular history, scientific 
correspondences have lost much of their former im- 
portance. In the days of the early Bollandists they 
were an absolutely necessary means for scholarly 
work. The correspondence of Bollandus was im- 
mense, though accurate data concerning it are want- 
ing; of Du Sollier (7 1740), we know that his list 
numbered twelve thousand letters. 


3. THE COLLEGE OF BOLLANDISTS 


A winsome and interesting characteristic of Bol- 
landus was his enlightened prudence and genial 
sympathy. Not many years had elapsed before he 
recognized that his work could not be done by one 
generation and that he was called not only to begin 
a great work, but to found a school. The result was 
the establishment of ‘“‘ The College of the Bolland- 
ists.” This consists of a select group of scholars, 
never more than four or five, totally devoted to 
hagiography, and bound together, less by the bonds 
of discipline than by devotion to their work. Ac- 
cording to the wishes of Bollandus, there was to be 


BOLLANDUS 199 


no position of superiority among them and, though 
there is a division of work, all questions of publica- 
tion were to be dealt with in common. It has been 
aptly said by a living Bollandist that ‘‘ to be certain 
of founding a school, Bollandus formed a family.” ® 

Such were the ideas of Bollandus, such the means 
employed. It would be a mistake to ascribe the suc- 
cess of the Acta Sanctorum exclusively to him, but 
to him must be given the credit of having well be- 
gun, of having firmly established and of having 
wisely provided for the whole enterprise. Still, as 
true scholars are wont to be, he was extremely 
humble and modest, and greatly rejoiced at the 
mature judgment, the industry and the keenness of 
Henschen (+1681), and the initiative, the critical 
acumen and the facile style of Papebroch (+1714). 
Both were his pupils in their youth, his assistants 
in their prime and proved his competent successors 
after his death. Together with him, they dominate 
the golden age of the Bollandists. When Bollandus 
died, in 1665, six large folio volumes had been pub- 
lished to the delight of the learned world. Henschen 
and Papebroch continued and intensified the work, 
so that when Papebroch came to die, in 1714, the 
Acta covered the first six months of the year and 
comprised twenty-four volumes. 

A critique of the work of Bollandus will, there- 
fore, acknowledge its imperfections, but will also 
recognize that these were due, not to incompetence, 
lack of industry or mistaken apologetics, but to the 


§ Delehaye, The Bollandists, p. 46. 


200 CHURCH (HISTORIANS 


condition of historical studies at that time. The 
earlier volumes are not the equals of the latest, for 
historical criticism needs historical sources and 
these were at that time not sufficiently available. 
That they were placed within reach of later scholars 
is, in great measure, the merit of the Maurists and 
the Bollandists, that they were critically sifted and 
prepared for use being above all the merit of the 
latter. Their seventeenth-century work was not as 
far advanced as that of the nineteenth, but even 
of the former it remains true that the Acta Sanc- 
torum are one of the greatest monuments of sound 
erudition, of patient research, and of critical taste 
that science knows. 


B. THe EIGHTEENTH AND NINETEENTH 
CENTURIES 


The earliest productions of great writers are often 
the best and it might seem that the same observa- 
tion is to be made of the Bollandists. The eight- 
eenth-century Bollandists no doubt maintained the 
high standard of erudition and painstaking accu- 
racy set by their predecessors, but were to some 
extent affected by the diffusiveness of the age and 
its religious controversies. However, Bollandus had 
planned well and his spirit had descended upon his 
successors, so that they continued to make note- 
worthy contributions to history and to historical 
studies. An advantage was derived from the fact 
that the work had been undertaken by a religious 


BOLLANDUS 201 


Order, which not only provided competent and well- 
trained workers, but insured also consistent methods 
and an established tradition, — an advantage of no 
little moment in the production of a work of cen- 
turies. A second advantage was more directly due 
to Bollandus since it flowed from the organization 
and the esprit de corps which he had bequeathed to 
his successors. This in fact was so close-knit and 
strong that the Bollandists outlived the suppression 
of the Society by twenty-one years. But we know 
the dreary story of the end: the contempt of the 
Acta as out of harmony with the age, the last wan- 
derings of the older Bollandists, the final catas- 
trophe in 1794 and the scattering of the Bollandist 
collections. 

However, storms do not last, and even the French 
Revolution became an event of history. A brighter 
day seemed to dawn for the Acta with the opening 
years of the nineteenth century. The Society of Jesus 
had been restored in 1814, Belgium had achieved 
its independence in 1830, the Belgian Province of 
the Society had been organized in 1832, and Catho- 
lic scholars everywhere urged the resumption of the 
Acta Sanctorum. The danger of others undertaking 
this work brought matters to a head, and in 1838 
the Neo-Bollandists published their prospectus De 
prosecutione operis Bollandiani. The event was 
hailed with joy by all the learned, and though the 
difficulties were many, the work has since then 
progressed at a steady, albeit slow, pace. Between 
1837 and 1910 ten volumes of the Acta have been 


202 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


published and three volumes of supplements, so that 
the work now comprises sixty-three volumes and 
gives the lives of all the saints from January 1 to 
November 8. The fourth volume of November has 
just been published. _ 

It may seem strange that the older Bollandists 
should have published the first twenty-four volumes 
of the Acta within seventy years, and that the Neo- 
Bollandists, in spite of all modern aids, should not 
have been able to publish more than ten volumes 
within the same space of time. The explanation is 
to be sought in the more exacting demands of 
scholarship, the fewness of writers, and the need of 
supplementing the earlier volumes. 

Father Charles De Smedt (1911), the Pape- 
broch of the nineteenth century, found it necessary 
to adapt the old methods to the new conditions, and 
not only to avail himself of a far more ample source- 
material, but also to subject it to a much more 
searching criticism. Scientific historiography has 
made notable progress during the nineteenth cen- 
tury, new branches of knowledge had been intro- 
duced, such as the study of comparative religions 
and literatures, and the auxiliary sciences of history 
were being intensely cultivated. If the Acta were to 
be true to themselves, they must necessarily meet 
the most severe tests, whether these were the rules 
of the auxiliary sciences or the cavilings of an un- 
sympathetic critic. Moreover, the need had arisen 
of supplementing the earlier volumes of the Acta, as 
well as of finding a means of publishing separate 


BOLLANDUS 203 


and lengthier studies. These considerations led to 
the publication of the Amnalecta Bollandiana. Ap- 
pearing quarterly since 1882, this periodical enables 
the Bollandists to supply corrections and supple- 
ments to the published volumes of the Acta,’ to 
hasten the publication of important manuscripts,*° 
and to publish special hagiographic studies and cata- 
logues.** In short, it serves in a general way as the 
subsidiary companion-publication of the larger work. 
Its scholarly papers are deservedly admired and its 
contributions to Catholic scholarship are of great 
importance. 

The fewness of writers has at all times been a 
serious difficulty, but never so much as during the 
last decades. It is easily understood if we bear in 
mind the varied and stupendous activities of the 
Belgian Jesuits and the many years spent in train- 
ing by a Bollandist. In 1922 the College of the 
Bollandists consisted of three members, Fathers 
Delehaye, Peeters, and Lechat, but four younger 
men were in training, one specializing in Gaelic 
hagiography, two others in medieval and early Chris- 
tian, while the fourth was to succeed Father Peeters 
as authority on the Greek and the Oriental saints. 


9 E.g. cf. Analecta Bollandiana, Vol. III. Historia S. Ursulae 
ex codice Bruxellensi 831-834. Vol. I. Vita S. Bonifacii auctoreé 
Willibaldo. 

10 E.g. cf. Vol. I. Vita S. Patriciti auctore Muirchu Mac- 
cumachthani. 

11 E.g. cf. Vol. XXIII. S. Ambroise et Vempereur Theodose. 
Catalogus Hagiographicus Bibliothecae Regiae Bruxellensis. Bib- 
liotheca Hagiographica Latina, 1898-1901. Supplementum, 1911. — 
Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca, 1895. 2a ed. 1909. — Bulletin 
des publications hagiographiques. 


204 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


We must abstract from the “ subsidia” and the 
other publications of the Bollandists, important 
though some of these are, in order to give a brief 
estimate of the work of Bollandus and of its place 
in modern historiography. 


C. Tue “ Acta SANCTORUM ” AND MODERN 
HISTORIOGRAPHY 


Leibniz ({1716) had said in reference to the 
Acta Sanctorum, ‘If the Jesuits had produced noth- 
ing but this work, that alone would be a sufficient 
reason for their existence and would entitle the 
Society to our esteem.” His opinion will not seem 
strange to those who have a more intimate acquaint- 
ance with the Acta. They must indeed be considered 
as one of the most important historical undertak- 
ings of the last three centuries, not merely because 
of their material contributions to historical knowl- 
edge, but also because of their systematic applica- 
tion of critical methods. Historical criticism was 
not unknown before, but never had it been so 
searchingly applied to the sources found and so 
extensively and consistently continued. The motives 
for this intensive criticism are to be found in the 
aim and purpose of Bollandus, which was to find 
and to publish the truth. He was of opinion, we may 
admit, that the truth, if frankly presented, would 
speak for itself, but there is no excuse for the insin- 
uations of Fueter which betray bias rather than 


BOLLANDUS 205 


knowledge.” To say without adequate proof, that 
the Bollandists developed historical criticism only to 
that degree which was compatible with the prin- 
ciples of their Order, has no meaning for one ac- 
quainted with the Jesuit Rule and deserves only 
contempt. Nor does another statement of his square 
with the facts. We are told that the Bollandists 
wrote for the apologetic purpose of saving the 
Catholic veneration of saints, and that they sought 
to meet the attacks of Protestants by a bolder scep- 
ticism of hagiographic legends.** The truth of the 
matter is that they were scientific historians and con- 
sidered it their duty as such to examine the connec- 
tion of a current version with the real facts, not its 
connection with traditional beliefs, legends and pop- 
ular devotions. This is proved to evidence by their 
very method,** which did not consist in writing the 
lives of the saints, but in publishing every ancient 
vita, every scrap of record, every bit of pertinent 
erudition, which would enable the reader, the 
scholar and the writer to construct the story him- 
self. The introductions and notes were their own, 
but were suggested by the text of the manuscripts, 
and were of such a scholarly and objective nature 
that any other aim than that of the quest of truth 
is inadmissible. The assumption, therefore, that the 
Acta Sanctorum are a cleverly disguised apology 
must be waived aside, though the sheer force of 
their sincere candor often enough attained this end. 


12: Fueter, L.¢., p.-325. 18 Ib., p. 310 
14 Acta SS. Jan. Tom. I. Praef., and Collis in Catholic His- 
torical Review, Oct. 1920, p. 294. 


206 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


There is nothing which supports this conclusion 
more strongly than the influence exerted by the 
Acta upon modern historiography, an influence 
which even Fueter is compelled to concede to 
them.*° 

The contributions of the Bollandists to modern 
historiography are of three kinds: source-material, 
special studies, and critical methods. For the pub- 
lication of source-material they were not the only 
workers in the field of history, even during the 
seventeenth century, nor was the mass of material 
published so much larger than that published by 
others. Still it has been said by a competent scholar 
that there is no work ‘“‘ which has given to the world 
such a wealth of admirably edited historical mate- 
rial.” *° Abstracting for the present from the intro- 
ductions and commentaries on the texts, we must 
remind ourselves that the critical collation of manu- 
scripts was in its infancy in the early seventeenth 
century and that catalogues of codices did not exist. 
Hence it was that the Bollandist publication of 
sources took two forms: a critical and carefully col- 
lated publication of the primary sources with their 
variant readings, and the publications of biblio- 
graphical catalogues, martyrologies and menologies. 

However, the texts published in the Acta Sanc- 
torum form only a small part of the work. Taking 
a broader view, the Bollandists have not narrowed 
their field of vision to hagiography, but have dis- 
cussed all incidental questions, even in their rela- 


15 Cts Fueter; t..¢., DiiS¥ ae 
16 Thurston in The Month, 1891, p. 20. 


BOLLANDUS 207 


tion to general history. The result has been that 
the Acta are a storehouse of historical information, 
and that there are few points of ecclesiastical his- 
tory upon which they have not shed new light. This 
collateral information and erudition is found as a 
rule in the introductory and explanatory notes ac- 
companying the text, but above all in the masterly 
dissertations often interspersed or, of late in par- 
ticular, published separately. As instances of this 
literary activity we might mention Bollandus’ 
preface on the writing of history,‘’ Papebroch’s 
discussion of the Carmelite Legend,'* and so forth 
throughout the past three centuries until Delehaye’s 
publications on the Cult and Martyrs and the Stylite 
Saints.*® As a rule these special studies were ex- 
haustive, and we of the twentieth century will find a 
strong proof of their unprejudiced and independent 
scholarship in the controversies which many of them 
caused at the time of their publication. Times have 
changed; in our day we are not terrified by the re- 
jection of a belief which has persisted perhaps for 
a thousand years, such as the Lateran baptism of 
Constantine, or the exposure of a forgery upon 
which during eight hundred years many authors 
have based papal rights, as for instance the False 
Decretals. We might almost say that we have be- 
come accustomed to such revelations, since the 


17 Acta SS. Jan. Tom. I. Praef.; Collis, in Cath. Hist. Rev., 
Hic. 

18 Acta SS. Apr. Tom. LI, p. 769; Delehaye, The Bollandists, 
p. 123 sqq. 

19 Delehaye, Les Passions des martyrs et les genres littéraires. 
Bruxelles, 1921. Delehaye, Les saints stylites. Bruxelles, 1923. 


208 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


naive credulity of the Middle Ages and the hostile 
perversions of anti-Catholic writers have both 
tended to make us slow to put faith in legends and 
cautious in the acceptance of popular traditions. 
From the viewpoint of the professional historian, 
however, the Bollandists have nowhere done more 
surprising work than in the field of historical criti- 
cism. From the first prospectus of Rosweyde, 1607, 
and Bollandus’ preface to the first volume of Jan- 
uary, 1643, down to De Smedt’s Principes de la 
critique historique, 1883, and Delehaye’s Les 
legendes hagiographiques, 1906 (Engl. ed. 1907), 
the Bollandists have emphatically advocated his- 
torical criticism in theory and in practice. Building 
on the foundation of solid and profound knowledge, 
which they had acquired by unwearied labor at the 
sources themselves, they carefully distinguished be- 
tween the various traditions, apostolic, historical, 
and popular. Setting aside the first as less within the 
purview of the historian than of the theologian, 
they applied the laws of science to historical and 
popular traditions. Historical traditions go back to 
the events themselves, and hence, if securely estab- 
lished, are true history; popular traditions often 
arise several centuries later, but by their catchy 
details and concrete additions often supplant the 
former or totally envelop them. The .distinction 
is of vital importance and has legitimately disposed 
of a mass of hagiographic fungi without tampering 
with healthy hagiography itself. Needless to say, 
the Bollandists had continually to deal with tradi- 


BOLLANDUS 209 


tion, be it written, oral, pictorial or monumental, 
but while subjecting the evidence to a searching 
probe, they have not handled it in a preconceived 
or iconoclastic spirit. Though they have been re- 
proached with having wrought havoc among the 
traditions of hagiography, they must in reality be 
acquitted of the charge of leaning to either extreme. 
Their condemnation of hagiographic errors was 
prompted by love of truth, not by carping jealousy 
or the desire of novelty. And it would seem super- 
fluous to add that this statement remains true even 
of such aggressive scholars as Papebroch, De Buck, 
Van Ortroy, De Smedt and Delehaye. 

Unbending love of truth was, therefore, the out- 
standing characteristic of the Bollandist historians. 
This naturally determined their methods. They 
made the most extensive use of the so-called auxil- 
lary sciences of history, not indeed in the seven- 
teenth century with that conscious facility which 
marks their work in the twentieth, but yet with 
such intelligent persistence that most of these sci- 
ences owe much of their existence and development 
to the Acta Sanctorum. Philological criticism was 
applied by the Bollandists to the analysis of the 
sources and of the authority of authors. Their 
chronological and topographical discussions are 
justly admired and, while not meeting present de- 
mands, are yet worthy of the age of Petau 
(71652). In critical studies they were usually the 
leaders, though they were always ready to admit 
the good work of others. For instance, Papebroch’s 


210 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


venture upon the uncharted main of diplomatics,”° 
called forth Mabillon’s classic work De re diplo- 
matica, and with genuine humility the Jesuit ad- 
mitted his own mistake, while he rejoiced at the 
gain for historical scholarship. 

As true scholars, however, the Bollandists have 
ever kept themselves free from the craze of con- 
jecture and hypothesis which afflicts so many lesser 
lights in our day. ‘‘ As a rule they (the Bollandists ) 
have abstained from attempting to solve insoluble 
problems, holding it to be a sufficient task to classify 
the hagiographic texts, to print them with scrupulous 
care, to make known with all attainable exactitude 
their origin, their source, their style, and, if possible, 
to pronounce upon the talent, the morality, and the 
literary probity of their authors.” ** It would seem, 
therefore, that the Bollandists were ahead of their 
age, and it could not be otherwise if, as even their 
enemies admit, they have made such important con- 
tributions to critical history. Would that they were 
more justly appreciated; would that they were fre- 
quently consulted. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


No complete biography of John Bollandus has yet been 
written. Apart from the sketches in the various encyclo- 
pedias and dictionaries — one of the best of which is the 

20 Acta SS. Apr. Tom. II., pp. i-xxxi. cf. also Delehaye, Leg- 


ends of the Saints, p. 122 sq. 
“1 Delehaye, Legends of the Saints, p. 218. 


BOLLANDUS ea 


article Bollandists in the Cath. Encycl., by Charles De- 
Smedt, S.J. — the student will find biographical data in 
the Prefaces to Vols. I (Jan.), II (April), V (May), VI 
(June), VII (October), and in particular Vol. I (March), 
which contains Papebroch’s notice: De Vita, operibus et 
virtutibus Joannis Bollandi, S.J, Delehaye’s recent vol- 
ume: L’oeuvre des Bollandistes (1615-1915), an English 
translation of which was published (Princeton, 1922), is 
the most complete account up to the present time of 
Bollandus. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON THE BOLLANDISTS 


Pitra, Etudes sur la Collection des Actes des Saints 
(Paris, 1856). 

RENAN, Etudes d’Histoire Religieuse (Paris, 1860). 

Hurter, Nomenclator Litterarius, I1, 222-233, 557, 883 
(Innsbruck, 1903). 

PevsterR, Die Bollandisten und ihr Werk, in Stimmen der 
Zeit, July, 1920. 

Lecuat, Les “ Acta Sanctorum” des Bollandistes, in 
the Catholic Historical Review, for October, 1920, 
PP. 334-342. 

Cotus, The Preface of the “ Acta Sanctorum,” ibid., pp. 
294, 307. 

PALMIERI, The Bollandists, ibid., Oct., 1923, pp. 341- 
357: 

Tuurston, The Bollandists, in the Tablet for April 8, 
1922. 

Guiupay, Introduction to Church History, pp. 145, 183, 
221, 274-275 (St. Louis, 1925). 

FEDER, Lehrbuch der historischen Methodik, p. 72. 
(Ratisbon, 1924). 

DuNIN-BorkowskI, Aus den Werkstaetten zur Erfor- 
schung der neueren Geschichtschreibung, in Stim- 
men der Zeit, 1912. 


MURATORI (1672-1750) 


RiGHT REVEREND THOMAS J. SHAHAN, D.D., RECTOR 
Catholic University of America 


HE greatest of Italy’s historians, Ludovico 

Antonio Muratori, was born October 31, 

1672, at Vignola, near Modena, better 
known as the birthplace also of the famous archi- 
tect, Jacopo Barozzi. His parents were in modest 
circumstances, but kept the boy at school, first in 
his native village, and later in the Jesuit college at 
Modena, where by dint of severe studies he ac- 
quired a more than ordinary knowledge, particularly 
of Latin, and laid the foundation of his almost in- 
credible erudition. He inclined from early youth 
toward the priesthood, and for that reason pursued 
the usual studies of philosophy, moral and dogmatic 
theology, and canon law, but his tastes soon led him 
to an intimate acquaintance with the masters of 
style, both classical and Italian. Soon he acquired 
a solid knowledge of Greek. Meantime he developed 
a taste for ancient inscriptions and read widely in 
that field, little thinking that he would one day 
rank among the great masters of Latin and Greek 
epigraphy. Indeed, his youthful admiration and 
tastes were all for classical antiquities, history, and 
letters, and his idols were Carlo Sigonio and Justus 
Lipsius. He looked originally on the medieval world 
as a long stretch of intolerable barbarism. 


212 


MURATORI om 


From a Franciscan friar he obtained an excellent 
training in logic and soon fell in with a remarkable 
scholar, Dom Benedetto Bachini, the Benedictine 
librarian of the Duke of Modena, under whom he 
made great progress in the reading and the science 
of medieval manuscripts. He was scarcely twenty- 
one when his phenomenal learning was brought to 
the attention of Count Carlo Borromeo, who ap- 
pointed him (1693) on the staff of the Ambrosiana 
Library at Milan, founded a century earlier by 
Cardinal Federico Borromeo, of all places the best 
suited for his peculiar genius. That year he pub- 
lished his first dissertation, on the value and excel- 
lence of the Greek tongue, also a study on the rise 
and fall of the barometer, while the next year 
(1694) he wrote a treatise on the earliest Christian 
churches and obtained his degrees in civil and canon 
law. He was ordained a priest in 1695. For seven 
years he lived amid the manuscripts and printed 
books of the Ambrosiana, hiving in his twenties the 
vast erudition that was to stand him in such good 
stead for fifty years. 


iF 


In 1697 he published the first volume of his 
Anecdota Latina, i.e. twenty-two dissertations on 
certain important discoveries he had made in the 
Ambrosiana, among them four hitherto unknown 
poems of St. Paulinus of Nola. In 1698 a second 
volume of similar researches appeared, and his name 
was henceforth pronounced in Europe with respect. 


214 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Incidentally, among the Bobbio manuscripts he 
came across the famous second century list of the 
books of the New Testament now known as the 
Muratorian Canon, and the Latin Antiphonary of 
ancient Irish Bangor. In this young priest of twenty- 
five the erudite world of Europe welcomed a new 
scholar and a critic whose insight, judgment, good 
sense, and correct feeling were thenceforth seldom 
at fault, though he was destined to range freely 
through every province of learning. 

The natural sciences, philosophy, ethics, classical 
antiquities, particularly Italian letters, attracted him 
in turn, and along all these lines he read enormously 
and retained his readings in an impeccable memory. 
He would probably have become the Magliabecchi 
of the Ambrosiana, if the Duke of Modena had not 
induced him to accept the office of archivist and 
librarian of the Este collection of manuscripts and 
books saved a century earlier from the wreck of 
their Ferrara fortunes. 

Muratori remained always deeply attached to the 
Borromeo family and to Milan, which he was wont 
to call ‘‘la citta del buon cuore,” and which later 
stood by him splendidly at the turning-point of his 
hopes and ambition. 

Literary interests seem to have absorbed his at- 
tention after his return to Modena. Two volumes 
(1700) entitled Della perfetta poesia italiana, criti- 
cal of the “ Marinismo ” of the time, even of the 
divine Petrarch, and two years later a somewhat 
similar work: Reflessioni sopra il buon gusto nelle 


MURATORI 215 


scienze e nelle arti, made both friends and enemies 
for him. He returned later to the Rime of Petrarch, 
and composed also two works on popular eloquence. 
To his literary tastes and interests may be ascribed 
the biographies of Maggi, Castelvetro, Orsi, Torti, 
Giacobini, and of his fellow townsmen, Sigonio and 
Tassoni. For a while he dreamed of creating a liter- 
ary republic in Italy, and drew up a constitution 
for it (1703) over the pseudonym of “ Lamindo 
Pritanio,” which literary disguise he favored for 
some time, chiefly on account of his youth. Mean- 
while he found leisure to publish his Epistola Ex- 
hortatoria ad Superiores et Lectores Italiae pro 
emendatione studiorum monasticorum, a severe but 
friendly criticism of the content and methods of 
education in the monastic houses of the peninsula, 
particularly of the dry and unattractive teaching of 
dogmatic theology. 

During the next ten years the little city of Co- 
macchio, amid the salt marshes of the Adriatic, 
looms up largely in the life of Muratori. In medieval 
times the Este family held it as an imperial fief. It 
lay, however, in the territory of Ferrara, and when 
in 1598 that city was taken over by the Holy See as 
a fief of the Church, Comacchio shared the same 
fate and became papal. In 1708 on occasion of the 
War of the Spanish succession, Emperor Joseph I 
seized Comacchio but eventually returned it to the 
Pope. Meantime Muratori, as archivist and libra- 
rian of the House of Este, asserted sharply, but in 
vain, its juridical rights, not only to Comacchio but 


216 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


also to Ferrara. The papal canonists replied, and 
the conflict, a purely literary one, dragged along 
through a decade. Though he wrote with dignity and 
calm, Muratori was accused, not without reason, of 
hostility to the temporal. power of the Holy See, and 
the controversy probably prevented the ecclesiasti- 
cal advancement which might later have been offered 
to him. 

Amid these distractions he brought out in 1709 a 
volume of Amnecdota Graeca, two hundred and 
twenty-eight unedited epigrams of St. Gregory 
Nazianzen, forty-five letters of Saint Firmus of Caes- 
area, four of Julian the Apostate and one falsely 
ascribed to Pope Julius I. The same volume con- 
tained also De Synisactis et Agapetis, de Agapis 
sublatis, and De Antiquis Christianorum Sepulcris. 
Two other volumes of Anecdota Latina, from the 
manuscripts of the Ambrosiana and other libraries, 
appeared in 1713, — letters, discourses, fragments, 
etc. About this time he published a work of much 
importance, De Ingeniorum Moderatione in reli- 
gions negotio, a plea for a fair and reasonable treat- 
ment of Catholic writers by the Holy Office. It soon 
went through several editions and was much read 
in Germany, where his sane and not unreasonable 
criticism of certain religious practices and customs 
aroused some controversy. Meantime he had be- 
come (1716) provost or parish priest of a church 
in Modena, Santa Maria in Pomposa, and as such 
soon introduced the Spiritual Exercises of St. Igna- 
tius under the direction of Padre Segneri, nephew 


MURATORI 217 


of the famous orator. His account of these devotions 
(1728) contains some sharp criticism of certain 
abuses connected with the veneration of the Saints. 
In 1714, fearing an outbreak of the pest, he pub- 
lished at Modena his famous Del Governo della 
peste from political, medical, and _ ecclesiastical 
viewpoints. It went through many editions, ren- 
dered notable service in cities afflicted by the pest, 
and won the approval of the best physicians. Mean- 
time he was busily engaged on the two volumes of 
his Antichita Estensi ed Italiane (1714-1720), the 
first of his great historical works, and a model of 
genealogical research. Through original documents 
and scientific commentary it traces back the famous 
House of Este to the tenth century, and establishes 
a common Lombard origin for the Houses of Este 
and Brunswick. He attracted thereby the favorable 
notice of George I of England, and entered into per- 
sonal relations with Leibnitz who made use of these 
researches in his epochal work on the history of the 
Brunswick dynasty. He also wrote on grace, on 
paradise, on fasting, on lessening the holidays of 
obligation, and on popular devotions, and was ever 
ready to defend with his pen whatever thesis he set 
forth. Perhaps the most notable of his numerous con- 
troversies was that known as De Voto Sanguinario, 
waged with ecclesiastics of Sicily who had popular- 
ized a vow to defend, even at the risk of one’s life, 
the Immaculate Conception of Mary. 

Muratori had all the instincts of a born teacher, 
and was never at rest until he had thrown his con- 


218 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


cepts into some handy and practical manual, and 
had given them a publicity that often took on large 
proportions. Feeling the need for the schools and 
the general public of an up-to-date manual of 
ethics, he composed a Filosofia Morale (1736) that 
was cordially welcomed and widely used. He com- 
posed also two works on Human _ Intelligence 
(1735) and on the Imagination (1745). He is al- 
ways a Catholic philosopher, sane, practical, and 
logical, though hostile enough to Scholasticism, or 
rather to the aged and arid forms in which it yet 
appeared. 

Francesco de Sanctis calls Muratori the Bayle of 
Italy. It is true that he was easily stirred by the 
sight of ignorance and superstition in religious life, 
and was active and courageous in denouncing them. 
It must not be forgotten that the eighteenth cen- 
tury was the “siécle de Voltaire,” and that every 
weakness of popular religion was for the first time 
noisily proclaimed to all Europe, every abuse and 
excess caricatured, and all defects parodied. On 
the other hand his domestic adversaries were many, 
but they served to popularize the reformatory writ- 
ings of this historical sage. More than once he was 
denounced at Rome, but always found papal pro- 
tection. “‘ Benedict XIV,” says Kirsch, ‘‘ wrote to 
him (1748) with the intention of easing his mind 
troubled by the attacks of adversaries, and Car- 
dinal Ganganelli, later Clement XIV, wrote him in 
the same year, assuring him of his great esteem 
and respect.” Muratori fought always with his own 


MURATORI 219 


hand, and from the ramparts of his books and 
manuscripts put up a very creditable defense of 
Catholic faith and discipline, based on truth and 
reason.* 

Pietro Giannone (1668-1744) and his Neapolitan 
followers were filling Italy at this time with a 
malicious misrepresentation of the origins of Cath- 
olic discipline and government, and flattering the 
Bourbon princes by their hostility to the temporal 
power of the Popes, more venerable in its origin 
and milder in its administration than any govern- 
ment of Europe. It is true that able ecclesiastical 
apologists were not rare when such names as Pal- 
lavicini, Tommasi, Gotti, Bianchini, Noris, and 
Merati were everywhere held in esteem, not to speak 
of the scholarly layman Scipione Maffei (1655- 
1755). But not all had the courage of Muratori or 
his burning zeal for religion, much less the good 
sense to see that the new irreligion had to be fought 
with its own weapons and on its own ground. This 
Muratori did, with so much frankness and fairness, 
so much public spirit, and such a command of facts 
that he may be looked upon as a forerunner of our 

1“ F dalla lotta co’ protestanti uscirono, in opposizione alle 
Centuriae magdeburgenses (1588-1607), i poderosi volumi in cui 
Cesare Baronio condusse fino al 1198 gli Annales ecclesiastici, e 
dalla rinnovazione del sentimento religioso e della devozione alla 
podesta della Chiesa usci |’ /talia sacra di Ferdinando Ughelli tra 
il 1644 e il 1648: due grandi opere, non senza difetti di critica la 
prima e di eguaglianza la seconda, ma che per la vastita e novita 
del disegno, la grandiosita del lavoro, la copia dei documenti 
comunicati, furono esempio e diedero impulsi efficaci alle raccolte 
storiche posteriori, come i due lavoratori che le fecero preannun- 


ziarono in altro campo l’ingegno e le fatiche di L. A. Muratori.” 
— Carpuccl, Preface, p. xxx. 


220 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


modern Catholic journalism. We may add that his 
burden was all the more difficult by reason of the 
strange weakness of French apologetics at a time 
when France was the chief source of all the philos- 
ophers, philanthropists, and “ esprits forts ” who 
were flooding Italy with their wares. 

Though the comfort and leisure of this great 
scholar were seriously affected for many years by 
the war which Spain and France and the Empire 
fought out, largely on the unhappy soil of Central 
Italy, he never lost sight of patriotic interests, while 
he retained the esteem of the foreign masters of the 
peninsula. His work on the public welfare, Della 
felicitta pubblica (1749), merited and secured uni- 
versal approval, as did another work, Dez difetti 
della giurisprudenza, with which he incorporated a 
code of laws (De Codice Carolino), drawn up for 
Emperor Charles VI of Austria, but never promul- 
gated. He denounced the current belief in magic, 
and wrote against the duel, as also against the use 
of torture and the abuse of capital punishment, 
against class privileges and special tribunals, and 
other relics of an undemocratic age. 


II 


When Muratori began to plan a collection of all 
materials for Italian medieval history that had es- 
caped the wreckage of medieval life, he could not 
consider himself a pioneer in the field of great his- 
torical collections. German scholars had long since 


MURATORI 22! 


roused the envy of learned Europe by the docu- 
mentary collections of Freher, Goldast, Meibom 
and Leibnitz, to say nothing of earlier names. Eng- 
land offered the national collections of Savile, 
Twysden, Camden, Fell and Gale. France honored 
the names of two Jesuits, Sirmond and Labbe, and 
of a great layman, André Du Chesne (1584-1640), 
author of thirty-four historical works, and who left 
one hundred folio volumes written with his own 
hand. Two French Benedictines, D’Achéry and 
Mabillon, had pillaged the archives and libraries of 
their ancient order; the latter, in particular, had 
published his immortal De re diplomatica (Paris, 
1681) and the nine folio volumes of his Acta Sanc- 
torum O. S. B. (1688-1702), models of erudition 
and good method, rich in notes, dissertations and 
prefaces. They stirred to action the lonely scholar 
in the grand-ducal library of Modena, and fed his 
patriotic ambition. The enormous folios of Grono- 
vius, Graevius, and Burmann, englobing so much 
erudition, medieval and modern, concerning Italy 
were his despair as he reflected that foreigners de-. 
voted themselves to its honor and glory, ‘ while 
Italians themselves slept or rather snored.’”? Doubt- 
less also, he remembered that various attempts had 
been made in the course of the seventeenth century 
to publish the national historical materials of Spain, 
Russia, Poland, Bohemia, and Belgium. And he was 
probably not ignorant of the fine historical work, 
outlined, begun or accomplished, in favor of Ireland 
by Franciscans at Louvain, Hugh Ward, Michael 


222 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


O’Clery, John Colgan, Patrick Fleming, and in honor 
of his own order by Luke Wadding at Rome. 
Nevertheless, Italy of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries did not lack all sense of its national his- 
torical wealth in the way of annals and chronicles. 
The famous humanist, Carlo Sigonio (1520-1584), 
townsman of Muratori, published (1574) a history 
of Italy from 570 to 1276, based on original mate- 
rials, and two years later (1576) his Catalogus his- 
toriarum et archiviorum Italiae, which Muratori 
himself calls “‘ insigne profecto opus.” Carducci says 
of Sigonio that he was “il vero scopritore ed apri- 
tore del medio evo,” and Muratori wrote a life of 
that great scholar. 

Vincenzo Borghini (1515-1580), a Tuscan man 
of letters, art-critic, sculptor, and historian, treated 
the history of Florence in dissertations not un- 
worthy of Muratori, and kept alive that ‘“‘ senso e 
sapienza della storia” for which his native city was 
famous from the Villani to Guicciardini. Early in 
the eighteenth century Sicily and Venice exhibited 
each some velleities of a collection of their local 
annals and chronicles, but the noble enterprise was 
happily left for the only Italian who had the will 
to the work and was qualified to plan it rightly and 
execute it quickly and perfectly. 

Muratori lived in a wonderful age, a “ saeculum 
mirabile ” of heuristic scholarship. The folios of 
Bollandist hagiology were piling up on the floors 
of all the great libraries. The output of ecclesiasti- 
cal literature, largely source materials, was aston- 


MURATORI 222 


ishing, — papal Bullaria, acts of councils, writings 
of the Fathers, rules of monastic orders, lives and 
letters of the Popes, acts of martyrs, primitive eccle- 
siastical discipline, ancient liturgies, the churches of 
the Orient, ecclesiastical antiquities, Scripture an- 
tiquities, the history of dogma, Christian apolo- 
getics, the classics of asceticism. We live yet to a 
great extent on the vast supplies hoarded by the 
scholars of those extraordinary decades. This was 
the age of outstanding ecclesiastical historians like 
Natalis Alexander, Claude Fleury and Tillemont, 
and of such extraordinary laymen as Baluze, Du- 
cange and Henri Valois. When Apostolo Zeno, a 
Venetian man of letters, left Italy in 1717 to accept 
the office of ‘‘ poeta Caesareo ”’ at Vienna, he aban- 
doned to Muratori his long-cherished design of a 
collection of Latin medieval writers concerning Italy. 
Muratori himself had once proposed a similar enter- 
prise. He meant to collect (1703) all the ‘‘ antiche 
storie, si universali come particulari, che doman- 
dianno scrittori nobili ed antichi delle cose romane, 
e venendo sino al 1500. In questa gran raccolta di 
storia dei tempi di mezzo avran luogo molti che non 
han peranche veduta la luce e si conservano mano- 
scritti in varie librarie con danno o almen senza 
profitto delle buone lettere” (Carducci p. xxiv). In 
other words, he would include all kinds of historical 
documents, chronicles, annals, histories, documents, 
and evidences of Italian life and thought from 500 
to 1500. The humanist Latin historians of the “ cin- 
quecento ” would not be included, and of the “ quat- 


224 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


trocento ” only those hitherto unpublished, or the 
least known. On the other hand he would include 
vernacular writings, hitherto not considered in the 
great national collections. He would revise and cor- 
rect printed ‘texts, add useful brief notes, and pro- 
vide suitable prefaces or introductions. When later 
the great work was finished (1738), he had taken 
over about one hundred and sixteen earlier printed 
texts, but had himself provided about two thousand 
texts, diplomas, chronicles, histories, poems, statutes, 
etc., hitherto unknown or inaccessible. This material 
he had collected from many archives, family and 
municipal, episcopal, monastic or capitular; also 
from libraries, public and private. It was an enor- 
mous booty gathered partly by personal visits but 
mostly by correspondence. 

His credit is all the greater, when we remember 
that no state, academy, or religious order stood by 
him in all these arduous years, during which he 
might have said with Cardinal Baronius “ torcular 
calcavi solus””: I have trodden the winepress alone. 
Nay more, he met with frank hostility on the part 
of the aristocratic republics of Genoa, Lucca, and 
Venice, not to speak of the duplicity of Turin. Car- 
dinal Albani refused him the entry to the archives 
of Nonantola, in the very suburbs of Modena. 
“You cannot imagine,” he wrote (1722) to Sassi, 
his Benedictine successor in the Ambrosiana, ‘“‘ how 
many obstacles I met and meet constantly, in the 
collection of these historical materials, being obliged 
to deal with suspicious, ignorant and envious 
people.” 


MURATORI 225 


His admission of Italian documents was a nov- 
elty; elsewhere vernacular documents had been ex- 
cluded, partly because of their lack of form, and 
partly because of their rather popular content. 
Muratori had dwelt so long and affectionately 
among these old Italian materials that he could say: 
“‘ Quella stessa semplicita e popolar forma del de- 
scrivere che che succede, ha il suo pregio. Non vi 
scopri arte e colori da infoscare la verita, e vi ac- 
corrono minuzie che ingegni maggiori avrebbero 
saltate e pero c’interessa conoscere.” On the other 
hand, he cut out mercilessly from the larger chroni- 
cles the endless pages that began with the Chris- 
tian era, even with Adam, and were taken mostly 
from Eusebius. Some critics blame him for sup- 
pressing this material, Latin and Italian, because 
of the many “paillettes d’or” which it contained. 
However Muratori was a critic of his own day, 
knowledge and interests, and not of ours. 

The great work was printed at Milan in twenty- 
four folio volumes, or twenty-eight tomes, from 
1721 to 1738, within the precincts of the royal 
palace, the old medieval burg of Visconti and 
Sforza.” A twenty-fifth additional folio was printed 


2 Rerum Italicarum Scriptores ab Anno Aerae Christianae 
Quingentesimo ad Millesimumquingentesimum, Quorum Potissima 
Pars Nunc Primum in Lucem Prodit ex Ambrosianae, Estensis, 
Aliarumque Insignium Bibliothecarum Codicibus. Ludovicus An- 
tonius Muratorius Serenissimi Ducis Mutinae Bibliothecae Praefec- 
tus Collegit, ordinavit, & Praefationibus auxit, Nonnullos Ipse, 
Alios vero Mediolanenses Palatini Sociti Ad MStorum Codicum 
fidem exactos, summoque labore, ac diligentia castigatos, variis 
Lectionibus, & Notis tam editis veterum Eruditorum, quam novis- 
simis auxere. Additis Ad plenius Operis, & universae Italicae. 
Historiae ornamentum, novis Tabulis Geographicis, & variis Lango- 


(226 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


in 1751, a year after Muratori’s death. Of the en- 
tire work one thousand copies were struck off. This 
costly enterprise was financed by several Milanese 
gentlemen, known as the “ Societa Palatina.” Promi- 
nent among them were the Marchese Trivulzio and 
the Conte Archinto, heads of prominent families 
of Milan. The publisher was Filippo Argelati, a 
bookseller of Bologna, friend and admirer of 
Muratori, and deeply interested in the financial 
success of the enterprise. Muratori enjoyed the 
good-will of the imperial authority, which protected 
the folios from any unwelcome censure, civil or 
ecclesiastical. By agreement with Rome, they ap- 
peared as printed “‘ Superiorum facultate,” without 
further indication of civil or ecclesiastical authority, 
not however without some rumblings of dissatis- 
faction from his ecclesiastical opponents in the 
Comacchio-Ferrara controversies. It was the first 
large comprehensive work of historical learning 
produced in Italy by Italians, amid adverse and 
pitiful conditions of Italian freedom. No pains were 
spared in the way of type, paper, and binding, so 
that, on its appearance, it surpassed any of the pre- 
vious historical collections brought out in Germany 
or France. “ L’Italia, gia signora del mondo, caduta 
sotto peso della propria grandezza, oppressa da’ 


bardorum Regum, Imperatorum, aliorumque Principum Diplo- 
matibus, quae ab ipsis autographis describere licuit, vel nunc 
. primum vulgatis, vel emendatis, necnon antiquo Characterum 
specimine, & Figuris Aineis. Cum Indice Locupletissimo. Medio- 
lant, MDCCXXXIII. Ex Typographia Societatis Palatinae in 
Regia Curia. Superiorum Facultate. 24 tomi in 28 voll. 


MURATORI 227 


barbari, lacerata da interne rabbiose fazioni, avvolta 
fra le tenebre dell’ ignoranza, ma dominatrice delle 
coscienze, ribollente di nuova liberta, e studiosa di 
uscire per nuove arti dalle proprie rovine, era uno 
de’ maggiori spettacoli della storia, e meritava le 
indagini della storia, onde di servie di ammaestra- 
mento e d’ immenso diletto.” ° 

The splendid folios met with universal approval 
as they issued from the press, and in due time the 
entire original edition was disposed of. Let the judg- 
ment of Montfaucon stand for the approval of the 
best European scholarship. Writing to Muratori he 
says: “The Rerum Italicarum Scriptores has met 
with general approbation, and has made you famous 
through all future ages.” Scipione Maffei declared 
him the “chief glory of Italy” (primo onore d’ 
Italia). This was also the opinion of Benedict XIV, 
who greatly esteemed Muratori, consulted and en- 
couraged him, and protected him against attacks 
from influential quarters. Berti, the Augustinian 
theologian, said of him that if Italy had never pro- 
duced another scholar, Muratori alone would have 
sufficed for her glory. Ugo Foscolo considered that 
Muratori deserved a statue in every one of the 
““cento citta d’ Italia.”” The respect, nay, the ven- 
eration of modern Italy is eloquently expressed by 
two of its most distinguished spokesmen, Cesare 
Balbo* and Allessandro Manzoni. The former de- 

8 Reina, Classici Italiani, Milan, 1818, Annali d’ Italia, preface, 
Pp. XXXvil. 


* “Egli solo fece pit per questa, che non abbia fatto per I’altre 
niuna societa letteraria, niuna congregazione di monaci studiosi. 


228 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


clares him the best all-around historian of Italy, and 
the latter asserts that the name of Muratori is hence- 
forth to be met on every page of the long medieval 
history of the peninsula.’ In his scholarly preface to 
the new edition of the Sc¢riptores Carducci says that 
only the potent voice of the Ezechiel of Vignola 
could call together, clothe, and revivify the dry bones 
of the medieval history of Italy.° 

A new edition of the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores 
was begun in 1900, at Citta di Castello, but is now 
published by Nicola Zanichelli, at Bologna: Rac- 


Adempié a tutti e tre gli offici che fanno avanzare la storia d’una 
nazione, fu gran raccoglitore di monumenti nell’ opera Rerum 
Italicarum; fu gran rischiaratore dei punti storici difficili nelle 
Dissertazioni, distese in latino ad uso pit studiosi, abbreviate in 
italiano ad uso de’ pitt volgari; e negli Anmnali fu scrittore del pit 
gran corpo che abbiamo di nostra storia, scrittore sempre conscien- 
zioso, non mai esagerato in niuna parte, non mai serville, sovente 
ardito e forte, e talora elegante ed anche grande.” — Sommario, 
p. 318 (Turin, 1852). 

5 “DL?immortale Muratori impiegd lunghe e tutt’altro che ma- 
teriali fatiche a raccogliere e a vagliare notizie di quell’epoca: 
cercatore indefesso, discernitore guardingo, editore liberalissimo 
di memorie d’ogni genere; annalista sempre diligente e spesso 
felice nel trovare i fatti che hanno un carattere storico, nel riget- 
tare le favole che al suo tempo erano credute storia; raccoglitore 
attento dei tratti sparsi nei documenti del medio evo e che possono 
servire a dare una idea dei costumi e delle istituzioni che vigevano 
in esso, egli risolvette tante questioni, tante pili assai ne pose, ne 
sfratto tante inutili e sciocche, e fece la strada a tante altre, che il 
suo nome, come le sue scoperte, si trova e debbe trovarsi ad ogni 
passo negli scritti posteriori che trattano di questa materia,” — 
Disc. stor. long., cap. II. 

8 “Cosi la grande collezione Rerum italicarum tocca Vestremo 
termine propostosi, e lo tocca con la storia di una citt& che a 
punto raggiungeva ella in quel termine la cima della sua gloria. 
Gli elementi storici della nazione italiana erano stati fino a quel 
termine per un millenio dispersi come le aride ossa nel campo 
dinanzi alla visione del profeta: occorreva la voce dell’ Ezechiele 
di Vignola accio si ricongiungessero, si rincarnassero, rivivessero.” 
— Preface, p. lxviii. 


MURATORI 229 


colta degli Storici Italiani dal 500 al 1500 ordinata 
da L. Muratori, nuova edizione riveduta, ampliata, e 
corretta con la direzione di Giosue Carducci e Vit- 
torio Fiorini. (Bologna, 1900-1926.) 

In this edition the text of the Scriptores has un- 
dergone considerable revision, amounting in the 
case of some portions to a new edition. Closely re- 
lated is the Archivio Muratoriano, a periodical de- 
voted to the scientific interests of the new edition 
and now at its twenty-second “ fascicule.’”? Many 
of the best historical scholars of Italy are contribu- 
tors to the new edition. Pius XI himself had in- 
tended at one time to contribute some fourteenth 
century texts, but was prevented by the events of 
the Great War. 


III 


What an incomparable panorama of medieval 
history is offered in this long shelf of noble folios! 
In their living pages alone can we catch any clear 
and sustained vision of the decadent Roman and his 
unspeakable conquerors, the Goth, the Frank, and 
the Lombard. Here alone can we follow the glorious 
rise of Venice from the nets of her fishermen and 
the huts of her refugees; the growth of Florence 
from the soft green hills of Fiesole, of Naples and 
Ravenna and Amalfi from the decay of Greek rule 
in the peninsula. Here are mirrored all the pictur- 
esque vicissitudes of Italian feudalism from Charle- 
magne to the Ottos and the Henrys. Here are all 
the slender threads and filaments of social life that 


230 CHURCHWAITS TORIANS 


connect ancient Mediolanum with medieval Milano, 
Senae with Siena, Padua with Padova, Ticinum with 
Pavia, and so on. Here above all is the unbroken 
Catholic life that supports and infuses all the 
thought and effort of mediaeval Italy, from Saint 
Benedict to Saint Francis and beyond; — the great 
abbeys like Novalese, Nonantola, Bobbio, Monte 
Vergine, Cava, Farfa, above all, Monte Cassino, 
whose splendid Chronicle of six centuries Carducci 
calls ‘“‘the best historical work of the middle ages.” 
Within the shadows of these venerable walls the 
common people began to live in their own right and 
to act in their own name, soon to have their own 
spokesmen in the earliest vernacular chronicles. 
Here, too, is all the romance of the Southern Nor- 
mans, that long-wavering battle-line between the 
Church and the Empire, from Gregory VII to 
Conradino. Here, too, are the maritime republics. 
Genoa, Pisa, Venice, that political, social, and eco- 
nomic wonder of all time, with their stiff cumber- 
some annals that will later become highly personal 
narrative, like Dino Compagni and Gino Capponi, 
or philosophical record of perfect form, like Mac- 
chiavelli and Guicciardini. The Scriptores are also 
the greatest treasury of medieval Latin and of the 
popular Italian speech into which one day this Latin 
faded off. 

Much of the medieval life of Italy, political, re- 
ligious, social, common-human, is to be found only 
in the Scriptores and in the wonderfully rich and 
curious appendix and commentary that Muratori 


MURATORI 237 


soon added to these many folios. I mean the Anti- 
quitates Italicae Medii Aevi. This great work, in six 
folio volumes, followed close on the completion of 
the Scniptores, appearing at Milan, from 1738 to 
1743. In seventy meaty dissertations, he discussed 
and illustrated the habits and customs, religion and 
government, laws and studies, letters and arts, mar- 
kets, language, warfare, and coinage, government 
and treaties, vassals, freemen and serfs, Jews and 
lepers, of the peninsula from 500 to 1500 a.D., with 
a wealth of original materials, charters, privileges, 
coins, wills, and curious documents of many kinds, 
all of which were made known for the first time by 
this indefatigable magician of the past. Moved by 
patriotic considerations, he began an Italian version 
of this delightful encyclopedia of medieval Italian 
life, but died before finishing the last dissertation, 
which was added later by a friendly hand. In this 
shape, it was printed at Venice (1751). Of this 
unique medley of information concerning medieval 
Italy suffice it to say that it has greatly influenced all 
modern Italian historical thought, being indeed a 
kind of huge mirror in which the peninsular soul 


7 Antiquitates Italicae Mediiaevi, Sive dissertationes De Mori- 
bus, Ritibus, Religione, Regimine, Magistratibus, Legibus, Studiis 
Literarum, Artibus, Lingua, Militia, Nummis, Principibus, Liber- 
tate, Servitute, Foederibus, aliisque faciem & mores Italict Populi 
referentibus post declinationem Rom. Imp. ad annum usque MD. 
Omnia Illustrantur, et Confirmantur Ingenti Copia Diplomantum et 
Chartarum Veterum, Nunc, Primum ex Archivis Italiae deprom- 
tarum, Additis Etiam Nummis, Chronicis, Aliisque Monumentis 
Numquam Antea Editis. Auctore Ludovico Antonio Muratorio 
Serenissimi Ducis Mutinae Bibliothecae Praefecto Palatinis Mediol. 
Soctis Editionem Curantibus. Mediolano, MDCCXXXVIII. Ex 
Typographia Societatis Palatinae in Regia Curias. Superiorum 
Facultate. 


232 CHURCED IRIS TORIANS 


could recognize itself, as it were in the making. 
Italian literature of the last century, so far as it of- 
fers a medieval content, is deeply indebted to this 
work which has no counterpart in any language. 
Finally, as though to complete a vast trilogy of this 
historical life of Italy in Christian times, he under- 
took and finished, in a single year, it is said (1740), 
his famous Annali d’ Italia in twelve quarto vol- 
umes, reaching to the year 1500, afterward con- 
tinued by himself to 1749, and by other hands, at 
various times, to 1861. It is yet unsurpassed in sev- 
eral respects as a history of Italy. Carducci says 
(p. lxiv) of these three works that never was the 
history of any people presented in a manner at once 
so rapid, perfect and compact. 

Amid these major occupations he was tirelessly 
active in other ways. For a brief hour the New 
World attracted his attention and he halted the 
progress of the Scriptores long enough to compose 
his Cristianesimo felice nelle missioni dei Padri della 
Compagnia di Gesu nel Paraguay (Venice, 1743), 
based on letters to him from Paraguay by the Jesuit 
Gaetano Cattaneo (1729-30), for which idyllic pic- 
ture of simplicity and innocence of life he was 
gratefully praised by the authorities of the Society. 
On the strength of it Benedict XIV requested him 
to undertake a general history of Catholic missions, 
but he declined. He never quite lost his original in- 
terest in early ecclesiastical history, and toward 
the end of his life produced a work of much im- 
portance, his Liturgia Romana Vetus (Venice, 1748) . 


MURATORI 233 


in two folio volumes, containing the text of three 
ancient Sacramentaries, or mass-books, known as 
the Gelasianum, the Leonianum, and the Gregori- 
anum, with a lengthy dissertation comparing the 
early medieval worship of the Roman Church with 
other Catholic liturgies, East and West. It is yet a 
very useful work, despite all that modern research 
and criticism have contributed to our knowledge of 
the religious services of early Christian Rome. 

He was a lifelong student of Greek and Latin 
epigraphy, and his correspondence is filled with re- 
quests to his friends for copies of inscriptions, or 
solutions of epigraphic difficulties. He was partic- 
ularly anxious to find hitherto unknown inscriptions, 
especially those omitted in extant collections. In his 
Novus Thesaurus veterum Inscriptionum published 
at Milan (1739-42) in six folio volumes, he brought 
up to date the collections of Spon, Gruter and others, 
and added notably to the justly famous collection of 
the Roman ecclesiastic, Fabretti. 

A complete edition of Muratori’s works, Latin and 
Italian, was published at Venice (1790-1810) in 
forty-eight octavo volumes, exclusive of the Scrip- 
tores. In his lifetime he had printed ninety-three 
volumes, forty-six in folio, thirty-four in quarto, 
and thirteen in octavo, a stupendous production, 
probably never equalled, particularly in view of his 
frail health and the incredible amount of his corre- 
spondence.* In the complete edition by Marchese 


8 Various additions to the monumental work of the Scriptores 
were printed before 1800. Thus Tartini published two folio vol- 


234 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Matteo Campori (Modena, 1911-1922, fourteen 
large octavo volumes) over six thousand letters are 
printed, not a few of them learned treatises. One of 
them, written (1720) to Count Artico di Porcia 
(Friuli), is an account of his own literary career, 
replete with wise and beneficent counsel. 

Muratori died at Modena, January 23, 1750, in 
his seventy-eighth year. He had long been ailing, 
and toward the end was affected with grievous eye- 
trouble. During his life he suffered much from 
headaches and was never robust. He had been al- 
ways a pious and exemplary priest, and had never 
ceased to edify all who came in contact with him. 
His calm and recollected exterior was mirrored in 
his works, especially the controversial writings, 
never disfigured by violence. His daily life, described 
in considerable detail by Don Soli-Muratori, his 
nephew and heir, exhibits a deeply religious man, a 
blameless and zealous priest, and a laborious scholar, 
to whom every hour of time was precious. He sur- 
vived by six years his famous contemporary, Gian 
Battista Vico (1668-1744) who spent at Naples an 
equally long life in the production of that epoch- 
making work, the Sczenza Nuova, destined to revo- 
lutionize all previous philosophy of history. Mean- 
while Muratori’s successor in the granducal library, 
the Jesuit Tiraboschi (1731-1794), was preparing 
himself at Milan for his monumental history of 
umes of allied historical materials at Florence in 1748, 1765; the 
Carmelite Mittarelli, one folio volume, at Venice in 1771. The new 


Bologna edition has so far nine Italian chronicles under the 
caption Accessiones Novissimae. 


MURATORI 235 


Italian literature, a natural and worthy sequel to 
the Rerum Italicarum Scriptores, and a fitting 
crown to the services rendered by the Modena 
library and archives to history and letters during 
the eighteenth century. 

It is in one of his letters (November 25, 1718) 
that occurs the famous couplet of this indefatigable 
writer to the effect that the scholar’s only true rec- 
- reation is a change of occupation: 


Non la quiete, ma il mutar fatica 
Alla fatica sia sol ristoro 


IV 


In the annals of Italian charity Muratori is an 
outstanding figure. He was a lifelong servant of the 
poor and the friendless, particularly of youth of 
both sexes, of homeless and workless adults, and of 
prisoners. To the latter he was particularly devoted, 
acted as their spokesman and intermediary, and re- 
quested as a favor from the Grand Duke that he be 
constituted their chaplain without remuneration. 
He visited the poor in their homes, and provided 
for them heat, food, clothing, and all necessaries. 
In his well-known work Regolata Divozione (Ven- 
ice, 1747) he pleaded strongly, not only for reason 
and moderation in the matters of feasts, images, 
processions, etc., but also for a considerable reduc- 
tion of the holydays of obligation, whose excessive 
number affected the employment of the poor. Reina 
says of this work that “ pochi libri contengono in 


236 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


se tante verita quanto quel aureo libro degno de’ 
primi Padri della Chiesa e ripieno della pit. pura 
filosofia pratica della religione cristiana.” He 
brought about in Modena a strict regulation of pub- 
lic begging, and caused worthy beggars to wear a 
device of authorization. He advocated workhouses 
for the poor, founded an association for the instruc- 
tion of abandoned children, and established a public 
hospital of two hundred beds that is yet in opera- 
tion. In 1720 he established in Modena a citizens’ 
association for a regular collection of the funds nec- 
essary for the charges of municipal charities, known 
as the “‘ Compagnia di Carita” and during his life- 
time he bestowed upon it large sums of money, the 
earnings of his active and popular pen. In 1716, as 
said above, he had become provost or parish priest 
of one of the city churches, Santa Maria in Pom- 
posa, and made it the centre of all his charitable 
activities. Once a year he had a charity sermon 
preached in that church, to which all Modena was 
invited. He had the city divided into districts for 
charitable service, and inspectors placed in charge 
of each district. Finally, he published in 1723 his 
famous work on Christian Charity and the love of 
one’s neighbor, Della Carita Cristiana in quanto e 
amore del prossimo, hailed by all Europe as the 
most notable contribution to the history and study 
and practice of charity that had yet appeared. It 
was at once translated into German, French and 
English, and won for him the highest recognition, 
ecclesiastical and secular. As a token of approval, 


MURATORI 237 


Emperor Charles VI bestowed upon him a rich col- 
lar of gold, the value of which Muratori donated 
for the use of the poor. In this work he treats at 
some length of charity as a virtue, but it is mostly 
in the light of good works that he discusses its na- 
ture and uses, as the practical love for our neighbor 
in Christ Jesus. In its thirty-six chapters, long since 
become a classic of the literature of charity, he ex- 
hibits an intimate sense of the sufferings of the poor 
and a cordial sympathy that takes shape in useful 
counsel and feasible suggestions. Scarcely any mod- 
ern agency of charity is forgotten, — hospitals, or- 
phan asylums, pawn-shops, foundling asylums; ref- 
uges for the insane and the half-witted, for fallen 
women; the care of prisoners, of the blind, the deaf- 
mutes, and the crippled. Almsgiving is a strict duty, 
a divine ordinance, and concerns particularly those 
who can give. He urges sharply the personal visita- 
tion of the poor, notably of the modest and retiring 
poor, recommends employment and _ supervision, 
and would forbid all begging by children, especially 
by young girls. It is truly a wonderful book to come 
from the hand of a man who for fifty years spent 
his days habitually in a vast library amid old books 
and historical trumpery of many kinds, coins, seals, 
inscriptions, medals, and piles of old manuscripts 
often written, as he picturesquely says, ‘‘in carat- 
teri per cosi dire diabolici.”” He was indeed a worthy 
forerunner of those two holy priests of Italy, the 
foremost modern apostles of charity, Blessed Cot- 
tolengo and Don Bosco. In 1733 he resigned his 


238 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


parish and two small benefices, whose revenue he 
had used for public uses. He had been a model 
pastor, and gave much time to the confessional, to 
catechism, and to preaching, though his weak voice 
and blood-pressure prevented any great exertion in 
the pulpit. He rebuilt the parish church, equipped 
the sanctuary, and attended to every parochial duty, 
directly or through his vicar. He corrected the way- 
ward and reconciled litigants. He was the father of 
his oppressed and harassed people during the 
wretched operations of a war that long eddied about 
Modena, and whose movements he graphically de- 
picts in his correspondence. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


The best life of Muratori is that by his nephew Don 
G. F. Soli-Muratori, Vita del proposto L. A. Muratori 
(Venice, 1736). It is the source of most of the short 
biographical sketches which have appeared since Mura- 
tori’s death (1750), especially those of Tiraboschi, Sched- 
oni, Fabroni, Tipaldo and others. Reina, Life of Muratori, 
written as a preface to his edition of the Annali d’Italia 
in the Scrittori Classici Italiani (Milan, 1818), is an ex- 
cellent character-sketch of the man and his work. Car- 
ducci’s preface to the first fascicule of the new edition of 
the Scriptores (1900) is the best account of Muratori’s 
place in modern historiography. Muratori’s enormous cor- 
respondence, now accessible in the edition of Campori, 
Epistolario di L. A. Muratori (Modena, 1911-1922), of- 
fers in fourteen volumes over six thousand letters, a 


MURATORI 239 


marvelous panorama of Italian life in the first half of 
the eighteenth century, and a self-revelation of unique 
psychological value. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON MURATORI 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


Capo, C., Leibniz e Muratori (Milan, 1893). 

BAuLZANI, U., Le Cronache Italiane del Medio Evo 
(Milan, 1884). 

BELVIGLIERE, La Vita, le Opere, ed 1 Tempi di L. A. 
Muratori (Florence, 1872). 

FurETER, Historiographie Moderne, pp. 395-397 (Paris, 
IQI4). 

Gay, L. A. Muratori, padre della Storia italiana (Asti, 
1887). 

MERKEL, C., Gli Studi intorno alle Cronache del Medi- 
oevo (Turin, 1894). 

ScHEDONI, Elogio di L. A. Muratori (Modena, 1818). 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER (1796-1838) 


Rey. Leo F. Miter, D.D. 
Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, O. 


1. LIFE 


E life of Johann Adam Moehler, the most 
promising Catholic scholar of Germany in 
his time, and a leader of the reaction against 
liberalism, was cut short in his forty-second year. 
Moehler was born March 6, 1796, of a well-to-do 
family in the village of Igersheim in Wuertemberg. 
Recognizing the boy’s gifts, his father gave him the 
best opportunities for education, sending him first 
to the Catholic Gymnasium at Mergentheim near 
his home. Having completed his course with distinc- 
tion, he continued the study of the classics in the 
lyceum at Ellwangen, 1814-1815. To prepare him- 
self for holy orders, he then removed to Tuebingen 
where he attended the lectures of Drey, Feilmoser, 
Herbst, and Hirscher, who ranked with the fore- 
most Catholic theologians of Germany in this period. 
According to the custom of the time Moehler spent 
the last year of his theological course in residence 
at the Wilhelmsstift, the Catholic seminary at Tue- 
bingen. On the 18th of September, 1819, he was or- 
dained to the priesthood. 
The second part of Moehler’s life was the un- 
eventful but highly fruitful career of a scholar. 


240 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 241 


Shortly after his ordination he was appointed vicar 
of Weilderstadt and Riedlingen, where he remained 
for one year, fulfilling the duties of his sacred office 
with scrupulous care. But the love for study grew 
upon him, and he welcomed his transfer to the posi- 
tion of tutor in the seminary at Tuebingen in the 
fall of 1820. In the two years during which he was 
connected with the Wilhelmsstift in this capacity, 
he devoted all his leisure hours to the study of an- 
cient classical literature. He specialized in early 
Greek philosophy and history, thus laying the foun- 
dation of his extensive patristic knowledge, which 
in the years to come enabled him to break the spell 
of the Illumination and to lead himself and others 
nearer to the ideals of the ages of faith. Through 
his long and thorough study of the classics he also 
acquired those eminent qualities of literary style 
which played no small part in making his influence 
dominate those who heard his lectures and eagerly 
read his writings. 

September 8, 1822, Moehler was appointed 
Privatdozent for Church history and_ kindred 
branches in the Catholic faculty of theology at the 
university of Tuebingen, where he remained until 
1835. Before taking up his duties at the university, 
he was offered a year’s leave of absence in order 
to acquaint himself more thoroughly with the prin- 
ciples of historical research and the methods of 
university work. With this end in view Moehler 
spent the allotted time principally at the univer- 
sities of Berlin, Goettingen, and Vienna. The sequel 


242 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


proved that it was time well spent. For the lectures 
which he attended, the scholars with whom he asso- 
ciated, and the libraries to which he was given free 
access broadened his mind, deepened his knowl- 
edge, gave him the true historical spirit, and filled 
him with enthusiasm for great undertakings. In 
Berlin he associated with Neander, whose stimulat- 
ing conversation and kindly encouragement exerted 
a powerful influence upon his future work. In a let- 
ter written during his stay in the capital of Prussia, 
Moehler extols Neander’s insistence upon the study 
of sources, his calm judgment, his deep religious 
sense, his moral earnestness, and his clear and con- 
cise manner of presenting the matter of his lec- 
tures. In the fall of 1823 Moehler took up his duties 
at the university of Tuebingen. His course consisted 
of seven lectures weekly on Church History and two 
to three lectures on Patrology. From 1823 to 1825 
he also substituted in Canon Law, and in 1830 and 
1831 he lectured on Symbolics. He became a fre- 
quent and valued contributer to the T’heologische 
Ouartalschrift. In 1825 he published his first book, 
entitled Die Einheit der Kirche, oder das Prinzip 
des Katholizismus. 

Immediate and tangible recognition came to him 
in the form of promotion to an assistant professor- 
ship March 16, 1826, and he was no longer required 
to lecture on Canon Law. In 1827 he published the 
first of his larger historical works, Athanasius der 
Grosse und die Kirche seiner Zeit, besonders im 
Kampfe mit dem Arianismus. Moehler’s ability was 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 243 


recognized also away from home, the university of 
Breslau offering him a full professorship in 1828. 
Loyalty to his Alma Mater prevented him from ac- 
cepting the tender and was rewarded by the honor- 
ary doctorate in theology (December 23, 1828) and 
by promotion to full professorship at Tuebingen on 
the last day of the same year. Moehler was now well 
established in the scientific world, and the ten re- 
maining years of his short life were devoted to 
Church history and Symbolics. In preparing his work 
on Athanasius, he remarked the similarity of the 
rationalistic tendencies in the fourth and early nine- 
teenth centuries and their baneful effects. The results 
of his investigation into the causes of the liberalism 
of his own time were published in his Symbolik 
(1832), which is his principal title to literary and 
theological fame. This book stirred the religious 
mind of Germany to the depths and was quickly 
translated into English, French, and Italian. It pro- 
voked a sharp rejoinder in 1833 from the pen of Fer- 
dinand Christian Baur, the leader of the later Prot- 
estant school of Tuebingen, whose chief aim was to 
establish a higher synthesis of Christianity and ra- 
tionalistic philosophy according to the dialectical 
formulas of Hegel. Nothing daunted, Moehler re- 
plied in 1834 by his Neue Untersuchungen, which a 
second time established the Catholic position in un- 
assailable, security. 

Though his controversial gifts were of a high 
order, Moehler’s nature was irenical. The pettiness 
of certain ones of his Protestant colleagues made 


244 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


his position at the university difficult, restricted his 
influence, dimmed his prospects, and embittered his 
life. Accordingly he accepted a professorship at the 
university of Munich April 30, 1835. Nominally he 
was to teach New Testament exegesis, but in fact 
he was to take over Doellinger’s course in Church 
History, since the latter was becoming estranged 
from the faith. In the same year the universities of 
Bonn and Muenster unsuccessfully attempted to 
add the fame and luster of Moehler’s scholarship 
to their own, and Bonn made another equally fruit- 
less endeavor in 1837. Moehler was far from well 
when he arrived in Munich. During the short period 
of his activity in his new position he worked with 
his usual consuming energy. Owing to the decline 
of his health, the king relieved him of the work he 
loved so much, making him dean of the cathedral 
chapter of Wuerzburg in the hope of thus prolong- 
ing a noble life. Providence had decreed otherwise, 
for on Holy Thursday, April 12, 1838, the illus- 
trious scholar returned his soul into the hands of 
his Creator. His tomb in Munich is surmounted by 
his likeness in marble and graced by the inscrip- 
tion: Defensor Fidei, Literarum Decus, Ecclesiae 
Solamen. 


2. THEOLOGICAL VIEWS 


To appreciate Moehler’s position as a historian 
and to understand the encomiums which German 
scholars have not ceased to lavish upon him, it is 
necessary to outline the development of his theo- 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 245 


logical views; for Moehler the historian of the 
Church is inseparable from Moehler the theologian. 
Moehler’s historical judgment is conditioned by his 
doctrinal views of the Church, her institutions, and 
the exercise of her powers. 

Moehler’s career is that of a mind thoroughly 
orthodox in intention from the outset, but not free 
from the liberalism which pervaded his intellectual 
environment. His initial rightmindedness and _ his 
sympathy for the Church and her ideals, joined with 
years of careful and unremitting study in the 
Fathers, enabled Moehler gradually to free himself 
from the incubus of the Illumination and to arrive 
at a better understanding of the Church, her insti- 
tutions, and her discipline, in strange contrast to 
Doellinger, who gradually strayed from liberalism 
to schism and heresy. 

Moehler’s writings are of unequal value for trac- 
ing the course of his theological views, but they 
remain the primary sources for establishing his in- 
tellectual development. Hence they constitute the 
basis of any inquiry into the subject. The Kirchen- 
geschichte von J. A. Moehler, which Father Pius 
Boniface Gams, O. S. B., published in three volumes 
at Regensburg in 1867-1868, thirty years after the 
author’s death, is really constructed of students’ 
notes made between 1825 and 1838, but of which 
the chronology is uncertain. The only parts of 
Moehler’s manuscript which have been made acces- 
sible are the sections published by Friedrich in 1894 
as supplements to the Kirchengeschichte, but their 


246 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


chronology also is uncertain. Hence this work must 
be used with considerable caution in determining 
Moehler’s development. The same reservations must 
be made with regard to the Patrologie aus den 
hinterlassenen Handschriften mit Ergaenzungen, 
edited by Moehler’s friend Reithmayr in 1840, and 
the Kommentar zum Brief an die Roemer edited by 
the same scholar in 1845. In both of these works as 
published, the original is not distinguishable from 
the editor’s additions. The principal sources remain- 
ing are the manuscript of Moehler’s lectures on 
Canon Law, numerous articles and reviews in the 
Theologische Quartalschrift, Die Einheit der Kirche, 
Athanasius der Grosse, Symbolik, and Neue Unter- 
suchungen. On these the following sketch of Moeh- 
ler’s development is based. 


I. THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CHURCH 


In a review of Walter’s Lehrbuch des Kirchen- 
rechts, published in the Theologische Quartalschrift 
in 1823, Moehler openly declares for episcopalism 
and denies that the pope in virtue of his office has 
the power of convoking ecumenical councils, presid- 
ing over them, and confirming them. Not the pope, 
but the teaching Church as a whole is infallible. In 
another review, published in the same year, Moehler 
asserts that the pope’s primacy of jurisdiction is 
based on the divinely instituted center of unity in 
the Church. Similar incompatible statements are 
found in Die Einheit der Kirche, of which Moehler 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 247 


in later years said: ‘I do not like to be reminded 
of this book. It is a work of my enthusiastic youth, 
in which I sincerely endeavored to form a correct 
view of God, the Church, and the world. But the 
book contains many statements which I no longer 
maintain. Many things in it are not sufficiently 
digested nor clearly presented.” 

Moehler further maintained that the episcopate 
is not an order, but merely an extension of the 
priestly power, and only mediately of divine insti- 
tution. This extension was made to maintain the 
unity of the Church, where several presbyters had 
been appointed to the same local church. 

Moehler also taught that the texts of Holy Scrip- 
ture taken singly do not prove the primacy, not 
even Matthew 16, 18, nor John 21, 15-17, for the 
Fathers interpret them in various senses. The pri- 
macy is proven by the position of St. Peter as 
recounted by the New Testament as a whole. Ac- 
cording to Moehler, therefore, the primacy is an 
inference from Scripture rather than a statement 
contained in it. 

Moehler adduces an argument from tradition to 
prove the primacy of the bishops of Rome as the 
successors of Peter. Cyprian and Irenaeus, he says, 
speak of the primacy without determining its na- 
ture. Rome was not the center of the Church in the 
first three centuries. With the increase of heresy 
and of the selfishness of bishops, which caused the 
spiritual unity of the Church to wane, a visible 
center became necessary to preserve the unity of 


248 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


faith. The wide diffusion of the Church also made 
it increasingly difficult for the individual to recog- 
nize the agreement of his faith with that of the uni- 
versal teaching Church; hence the necessity of con- 
centrating the supreme power in a visible center. 
Moehler, therefore, claims a vague foundation in 
divine right for the primacy of Rome, but dates its 
exercise from the time of Cyprian and assigns the 
need of unity as its motive. 

Moehler mentions a number of reasons in favor 
of the separability of the primacy from the Roman 
See by the consent of the universal Church, but 
does not commit himself on their value. 

The primacy of the bishops of Rome is a primacy 
of jurisdiction in the sense that the pope is to main- 
tain and execute the decrees of the body of bishops, 
who are the supreme governing power in the Church. 
Moehler gives many proofs drawn from the Acts of 
the Apostles, the history and practise of the Church, 
and the ecumenical councils to show that the pope 
is subordinate to the body of bishops. He is also a 
pronounced anti-infallibilist. 

By divine right all bishops and priests are right- 
ful members of an ecumenical council. The great 
number of priests and the need of their constant 
presence in their parishes makes it impossible to 
convoke them for a council; hence the bishops alone 
are called to it. For the validity of an ecumenical 
council a relatively large number of bishops from all 
parts of the Church must be present at it, and its 
decisions must be accepted by the entire teaching 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 240 


Church. The pope is only the equal of his brother 
bishops in the council. A council does not become 
valid nor ecumenical by being confirmed by him. 
The purpose of councils is to bring about unity in 
the Church. 

The pope has essential and accidental rights. His 
essential rights are the supervision of the universal 
Church; the execution of doctrinal and disciplinary 
decrees, including the right of devolution and the 
protection of bishops; and the promulgation of pro- 
visional doctrinal decrees, which become legal in 
those churches in which they are promulgated and 
accepted. Accidental rights which accrued to the 
popes in the course of history are: preconizing 
bishops; authorizing their transfer to other sees; 
appointing coadjutors; granting exemptions and dis- 
pensations; and conferring benefices. 

All these details are found in Moehler’s lectures 
on Canon Law, which were delivered 1823-1825. 
They are far removed from the errors of the eccle- 
siastical democracy propounded by De Dominis, 
Richer, Febronius, and others. But they are plainly 
Gallican, and embody other personal views of Ger- 
son, D’Ailly, and their contemporaries. Moehler 
derived them from German theologians of his own 
time, such as Michl, Sauter, Drey, and Hirscher. 
He maintained them also in his Church History as 
edited by Gams and Friedrich. Here he says, stress- 
ing the necessity of the papacy for the unity of the 
Church: ‘“ The papacy is the product of ignorance 
and barbarism, but ignorance and barbarism are 


250 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


not the product of the papacy. . . . Not the physi- 
cians brought the malady; the malady made the 
physicians necessary.” 

Moehler’s progress in the right direction away 
from Gallicanism began in the next following years. 
In his book on Athanasius he does not restrict him- 
self to the testimony of the first three centuries. He 
quotes Sozomenes saying that no general laws of the 
Church may be made without the consent of the 
bishop of Rome. Speaking of the council of Sardica, 
he remarks that in order to avoid the disunity 
caused by Arianism the local churches must remain 
united with the pope, who has the rank of Peter. 
Moehler began to realize that the center of unity, 
as which he recognized the papacy, cannot be sub- 
ordinate to the parts which it is to unite. Hence also 
the favorable review which he wrote of the sixth 
edition of Walter’s treatise on Canon Law in 1829, 
the first edition of which he had criticised. But here 
again he erred in praising the author’s avoidance of 
both episcopalism and papalism. 

In Fragmente aus und ueber Pseudotsidor, pub- 
lished in 1829 and 1832, Moehler seeks the origin 
of the false decretals in France and admits the good 
intentions of their author. 

In the first edition of the Symbolik (1832), $37, 
he maintains that only a united episcopate gathered 
about the pope can preserve the life of the Church. 
In the fourth edition of the same work (1835) he 
abandons his Gallicanism in § 43 where he says 
that the harsh theory subordinating the pope to a 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 251 


general council has disappeared. Though he does 
not prove this important thesis, the support he gives 
to it shows that he had now abandoned his former 
views of the equality of all bishops, including the 
bishop of Rome, of the validity of councils without 
the pope, of the distinction between essential and ac- 
cidental rights of the pope, and of the separability 
of the papacy from the Roman See by the consent 
of the whole teaching Church. But he did not reach 
the position of the constitution De Ecclesia of the 
Vatican council, which subordinates the body of 
bishops to the pope. 


II. CHURCH REFORM 


The principle that all forms of worship, piety, 
and clerical discipline must be filled with true eccle- 
siastical spirit pervades all Moehler’s writings. But 
just as he was obliged to correct the ideal of the 
Church which he had formed in his youth, so he 
was constrained to abandon also many of his ideas 
of liturgical and disciplinary reform. In his first 
two years at the university he advocated com- 
munion under both species for the laity, a vernacu- 
lar liturgy, abolition of the so-called solitary masses, 
and of mass stipends. He always stood for the best 
possible education of the clergy. He was relentlessly 
opposed to the request for the abolition of the 
celibacy of the clergy, which was made to the gov- 
ernment of Baden. ‘“ Celibacy,” he wrote in 1828, 
“is a living protest against the attempt to lose the 


252 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Church in the state. . . . It will prevent worldly- 
mindedness in the church, and frustrate any pos- 
sible attempt by powerful men in the Church to 
subordinate the state to the Church.” Another 
time he wrote, “A clergy without spirituality is a 
born cripple.” In 1838 he had given up the idea of 
a vernacular liturgy. In the later editions of the 
Symbolik, § 34, he desired that communion under 
both species be made optional for the laity. From 
1830 he also modified his views on ecclesiastical 
discipline: the general laws of the Church should 
be made by the pope, but only with the consent and 
sanction of the local bishops. He remained opposed 
to the granting of quinquennial faculties to bishops 
by the Holy See and to the establishment of perma- 
nent papal nunciatures. 


III. CHURCH AND STATE 


In his earliest discussion of this subject Moehler 
placed the idea of the Church above that of the 
state, but in practice he wanted Church and state 
coordinated. ‘‘ If the Church dominates the state as 
it did in the Middle Ages, it loses its distinctive 
character, that is, as soon as the Church no longer 
acts as a Church, it begins to dominate the state; 
for liberty has then become coercion, and spirit has 
become mechanism.” The Church renders moral 
support to the state, making civic loyalty an obli- 
gation of conscience. The state must protect the 
Church in externals, because the sovereign has the 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 253 


duty of preventing all harm to the state. By reason 
of its right of supervision the state has the general 
power of insisting upon the abolition of antiquated 
discipline and custom, e.g., processions, pilgrimages, 
and superfluous holydays. The state may further 
insist that laws and ordinances of popes and bishops 
be submitted to the government for approval before 
promulgation. In particular, according to Moehler’s 
view, the state has the right to supervise the edu- 
cation of the clergy, to fix their number, to control 
the rules of religious orders, to control the con- 
nection of religious with foreign superiors, to accept 
appeals, to supervise the administration of church 
property, to amortize such property, and to fix the 
limits of dioceses and parishes. 

Moehler opposed all but state universities. He 
says that “at the present time a university which 
is not in its essentials incorporated into the state 
would be an anomaly and an element of antiquated 
education.” 

At the same time Moehler advocated a relative 
independence and liberty of the Church, though it 
is hard to see wherein it consists after all the con- 
cessions he had made. Writing of St. Anselm as a 
champion of the Church, he says, ‘“‘ Christ redeemed 
the Church and made her free through his blood; 
she cannot be a servant of the state.” 

In all these theories Moehler failed to see that 
accidental advantages accruing to the Church from 
a friendly government can never be constituted into 
a principle, and that occasional weakness and error 


254 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of subordinate individuals in the government of the 
Church can never diminish or extinguish her divine 
rights. It is certain that in later years Moehler 
veered to the right in his views on the relation of 
Church and state, but we have no written record 
of these later opinions. In the preface to his edition 
of Moehler’s Gesammelte Schriften und Aufsaetze, 
Doellinger says that in speaking to his friends, 
Moehler repudiated many of his earlier statements, 
and that he would have given public utterance to 
his changed attitude if his life had been spared to 
enable him to carry out his literary plans. 


IV. FAITH AND REASON 


Moehler’s early views on this important sub- 
ject may be characterized as a mild form of tradi- 
tionalism and summarized in these propositions: (1) 
true knowledge of God is founded on natural faith 
(Vernunftglaube). Following his teacher, Sebastian 
Drey, Moehler requires a kind of natural faith for 
all true knowledge of God, without saying, how- 
ever, whether this faith is to be acquired through 
natural or through supernatural revelation. He bases 
his view on the early Christian apologists, espe- 
cially on Clement of Alexandria. He appears to have 
maintained this view to the end, as it is still found 
in his letter to Bautain, written in 1834. (2) This 
natural faith is impossible without positive revela- 
tion and illuminating and sanctifying grace. Posi- 
tive revelation is the necessary excitant of natural 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 255 


faith, but not the ultimate ground of its certainty. 
Echoes of this view are found in the paper on St. 
Anselm (1827-1828), and in §1 of the first four 
editions of the Symboltk. In the fifth edition they 
are omitted. (3) The evidence of the divine origin 
of revelation is found in criteria immanent in itself, 
not in external proofs. The testimony of the Holy 
Ghost in the soul of each individual man proves 
both the fact and the content of revelation to be 
supernatural. Moehler later saw how untenable this 
proposition is, and how uncertain and fleeting the 
testimony of mystical experience. He then pro- 
pounded the usual external criteria of revelation 
and stressed the necessity of grace for the act of 
faith and the necessity of faith for the full and true 
understanding of the content of revelation. 


V. NATURE AND GRACE 


In his earlier years Moehler had a certain sym- 
pathy for the mystical inwardness, the desire for 
spiritual perfection, and even the ethical rigor of 
the Jansenists. Though he acknowledged that the 
faith was preserved in his native country largely 
through the work of the Jesuits, he had an antipathy 
to what he considered their superficial intellectual- 
ism in theology, their probabilism, and their over- 
stressing of the external elements of religion. These 
preferences and aversions were conditioned by his 
doctrinal views on nature and grace. 

In 1826 he wrote that he could not read the bull 


256 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Unigenitus without horror. In the sections of his 
Church History, as published by Friedrich, he says 
that Jansenism could not be allowed to win, but 
that it was much better than the degeneration of 
Jesuitism. He still held this view after 1830. 

In the Symboltk Moehler finds the root of the 
difference between Catholicism and Protestantism 
in their different conception of Christian anthropol- 
ogy. According to the former original sin did not 
substantially alter man’s nature, according to the 
latter it did. First Moehler considered the gifts of 
the state of original justice, apart from sanctifying 
grace, as natural, but in later editions of the Sym- 
bolik he recognized that this state is supernatural 
(§ 1). He had been led to adopt the view that the 
original harmony of all elements and faculties of 
man is a natural endowment, because he was con- 
vinced that man as created by God could not be 
defective in his relations with God, nor have ele- 
ments disturbing the use of his free will. Hence his 
opposition to Bellarmin’s teaching that original sin 
deprived man only of supernatural gifts. 

Moehler could not accept the probabilism of the 
Jesuits. In the first edition of Neue Untersuchungen 
(1834), p. 293, he says: “‘ Those who desire to op- 
pose Protestantism with success must have some- 
thing in common with Protestants. . . . In order 
to reconcile men with the severity of Catholic ethics, 
the Jesuits gradually adopted the view that it was 
necessary also to stress everywhere the frailty of 
human nature, as Protestants did; they considered 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 257 


it necessary to moderate the requirements of Catho- 
lic ethics for people as they are in order to quiet 
and console them. Since they could not alter Catho- 
lic dogma, they endeavored by indulgent and lax 
treatment of individual cases to effect what Protes- 
tants granted in principle by the doctrine that faith 
alone is required for salvation.” It is needless to say 
that Moehler completely misunderstood probabil- 
ism. We have no means of establishing whether 
Moehler was a probabiliorist or equiprobabilist, nor 
whether he considered that these doctrines also may 
contain false qualifications of a course of action. 


VI. THE SACRAMENTS 


In his lectures on Canon Law, 1823-1825, Moeh- 
ler maintained that in virtue of his ordination every 
priest can validly confer sacramental absolution 
even from reserved cases. The approbation of the 
ordinary is required only for the licit exercise of 
this power. In a review published in 1823 Moehler 
considers indulgences merely as an ecclesiastical in- 
stitution remitting canonical penance. The custom 
of conferring them remained even after this penance 
had been abolished, because a new penance was im- 
agined and then remitted by applying the merits of 
the reputed treasury of the merits and satisfactions 
of Christ and the saints. He considered the Por- 
tiuncula indulgence particularly undesirable. 

It is not known whether Moehler maintained his 
errors on the priest’s power of absolution in his 


258 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


later years. In his Church History and Symbolik 
he modified his views on the nature of indulgences 
and the treasury of merits and satisfactions to the 
extent of declaring them well founded scholastic 
doctrine. Apparently he never realized that they 
are generally considered in the Church as doctrina 
fidet proxima. 

Moehler granted both to Church and state the 
right of establishing diriment impediments of mat- 
rimony, since marriage is both a contract and a 
sacrament. According to his view the state originally 
exercised this right with regard to unbelievers and 
did not lose it when they became Christians. The 
Church also exercised this right independently of 
the state, and gradually the state accepted the eccle- 
siastical code as its own civil code. In the lectures 
on Canon Law he modified these opinions to the 
extent of saying that civil impediments are void 
when they are opposed to the nature of Christian 
marriage. In the last year of his life Moehler op- 
posed the Prussian practice of forcing a certain reli- 
gion upon the offspring of mixed marriages, though 
conceding to the state the right of subsidiary legis- 
lation in this matter when parents neglected the 
religious instruction of their children. 


3. THE HISTORIAN 


Coming now to the final question, we inquire, 
what are the achievements of Moehler the historian, 
and how did he attain to them? 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 259 


The Catholic faculty of theology at Tuebingen 
was founded toward the close of 1817. The first 
incumbent of the Chair of Church History, who also 
taught Canon Law, Georg Leonhard von Dresch, 
Dr. iur. utr., was a Catholic layman who had been 
professor of history and the philosophy of law at 
Tuebingen since 1811. Lacking interest in Church 
history, he resigned this course in 1818 and was 
temporarily succeeded in it by J. G. Herbst, pro- 
fessor of Old Testament exegesis. When Dresch 
accepted a position at Landshut in 1822, Moehler 
was appointed to the chair of Church history in 
Tuebingen. Though he had not previously special- 
ized in Church history, his ability, which bordered 
on real genius, combined with indefatigable industry 
and stimulated in the highest degree by the inspir- 
ing example and the scientific bent of his colleagues 
and by the literary travels he had undertaken at 
the request of the university, soon made Moehler 
one of the beacon lights of science in his Alma 
Mater. 

Moehler’s course in Patrology considered both the 
literary and the theological aspects of patristic liter- 
ature. The “ patristische Uebungen” of 1825, in 
which he trained his students in the study of sources, 
were the beginning of the modern seminar. Accord- 
ing to the lecture lists of the university Moehler’s 
seminar course dealt with the Stromata of Clement 
of Alexandria in 1823-1824; with St. John Chrysos- 
tom’s De Sacerdotio in 1824; with explanations of 
the Epistle to the Romans by St. Augustine, St. 


260 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Chrysostom, and Theodoretus in 1825; with St. 
Athanasius’ De Incarnatione and Contra Arianos in 
1825-1826; with the Commonitorium of Vincent of 
Lerins in 1826; and with the letters of the Apostolic 
Fathers in 1826-1827. In 1832-1833 Moehler added 
a general course in Christian literature to his course 
in Patrology. The great influence of his lectures on 
Patrology was due to the fact that Moehler com- 
bined a penetrating analysis and sympathetic ap- 
preciation of his subject with the magnetic gifts of 
a harmonious personality, infusing into his work a 
contagious enthusiasm which kindled similar fires 
of a lifetime in the minds of his students. In a let- 
ter written in 1823 to his uncle in Rottenburg, he 
avows that his endeavor to reach the spirit and sen- 
timent of the Fathers rather than their ideas alone 
was due to the stimulus he had received in Berlin 
from Neander. 

Die Einheit der Kirche (1825) is the pioneer 
Catholic monograph on the history of dogma in 
Germany. An atmosphere of deep feeling pervades 
this work, which is an attempt to expound the or- 
ganization of the Church and its functions as di- 
rected by the Holy Ghost. It sets forth the spiritual 
unity of the faithful in belief, morals, and worship, 
and the visible unity effected by the hierarchy of 
the Church. By stressing the spiritual life and the 
sanctifying power of the Church, this work of 
Moehler brought before the minds of Catholics 
tainted with rationalism the true nature and purpose 
of the Church, infusing new courage into the de- 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 261 


pressed, sustaining faltering belief, and winning rec- 
ognition for the ideals of Catholicism even from its 
enemies. Though it would be difficult to trace the 
effects of this book upon theological science in con- 
crete detail, there is no doubt that it constitutes the 
driving impulse which led a whole generation of 
German scholars to a fruitful study of the history 
of dogma. In his later years Moehler was well aware 
of its defects. Despite its positive character, it is 
under the spell of Hegelian ideas, evolving the exis- 
tence and nature of the Church from its abstract 
concept, rather than from the empirical facts of 
revelation and from the supernatural marks of the 
Church in all epochs of history. Other errors on 
the constitution of the Church and the primacy 
have been mentioned in the section on Moehler’s 
theological views. In recent years a regrettable at- 
tempt was made by E. Vermeil to show that Moehler 
is the father of modernism in Germany. He was not 
one to foster modernistic opinions, for he maintained 
the divine institution of the Church, of the primacy, 
and of the episcopate; furthermore he asserts the re- 
vealed character of the dogmas of the Church, and 
denies the objective perfectibility of revelation. His 
shortcoming lies in the fact that his ideas on these 
subjects were vague and imperfect rather than sub- 
jectivistic, and that he did not touch upon them in 
this book. . 

They attain prominence in Athanasius der Grosse 
(1827), which stands in the vanguard of a new form 
of historical writing, the historical monograph as 


262 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


distinguished from biography. Moehler gives promi- 
nence to the general position of Athanasius in the 
history of the Church and in the development of her 
doctrine. The permanent value of this book lies in 
its brilliant analysis of the writings of Athanasius 
and its careful study of his doctrine on the Trinity 
and on the Logos. The study of Athanasius removed 
many of Moehler’s Gallican views. He now con- 
siders the Church as “the living, objectivated Gos- 
pel”’; he realizes that the primacy of the bishop of 
Rome was the only safeguard against ‘“ schism, 
arbitrary power, and destruction” in the Church. 
Like others among his contemporaries he limited 
the primacy of the pope to the supreme executive 
power. The monograph on St. Anselm of Canter- 
bury, which was published as a series of articles in 
the Theologische Quartalschrift in 1827-1828, glows 
with the same enthusiasm for the Church, whose lib- 
erties St. Anselm was defending against William II 
and Henry I. Though failing to do justice to St. 
Anselm as the Father of Scholasticism, this mono- 
graph has the imperishable merit of having shown 
the necessity of a renewal of theological science by 
returning to the much decried schoolmen. It is a 
matter of history that the revival of scholasticism 
in Germany proceeded from three sources: the 
seminary at Mainz, Moehler and his pupil Kuhn 
in Tuebingen, and the philosophical current of 
romanticism (Baader, Deutinger, Rosenkrantz, 
Windischmann, etc.). 

Fragmente aus und ueber Pseudoisidor is an in- 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 263 


vestigation into the purpose and the origin of the 
Pseudo-Isidorian decretals. Moehler’s solution of 
the problem is that these decretals are a pious fraud 
contrived between 836 and 840 in order to effect 
the reform of the Church in the western part of the 
Frankish empire, which had been disrupted by the 
civil wars under Louis the Debonnaire and his sons. 
Later historians have judged more severely of 
Pseudo-Isidore, but the substance of Moehler’s in- 
vestigation has been accepted. 

Moehler’s Symbolik has not the reading public 
to-day which eagerly devoured its contents in the 
thirties. This is not because it has lost its apolo- 
getic value, but because the battleground between 
Catholicism and Protestantism has shifted from the 
field of positive faith in revelation to that of the 
historical foundations of Christianity. The origins 
of the Symbolik are found in the new subjects to 
which Moehler turned his attention. From ancient 
Christianity he turned to the final phase of the 
Middle Ages and to the Reformation. The latter he 
characterized as a revolutionary movement, which 
interrupted the course of regular and legitimate re- 
form and destroyed the germ of much that was 
good. 

The attack of Protestant scholarship on Catholi- 
cism in Germany was the immediate cause deter- 
mining Moehler to write the Symbolik. The com- 
parative evaluation of the doctrines of the ancient 
faith and of the new churches founded by those 
who seceded from it in the sixteenth century had 


264. CHURCH HISTORIANS 


been attempted before Moehler. Bellarmin’s Con- 
troversies, published at Ingolstadt, 1586-1593, 
Becanus’ Manuale Controversiarum, first published 
in 1623, and various writings of Bossuet were 
Moehler’s earliest predecessors. His immediate fore- 
runners in Comparative Symbolics are two Protes- 
tant works: Planck’s Abriss einer Historischen und 
vergleichenden Darstellung unserer verschiedenen 
christlichen Kirchenparteien (Goettingen, 1796), 
and especially Marheineke’s Christliche Symbolik 
(1810-1813) and Jnstitutiones Symbolicae (1812). 
In the Theologische Quartalschrift, 1828, p. 346, 
Moehler regrets the lack of a German counterpart 
of Milner’s End of Controversy. Sebastian Drey, 
whose lectures Moehler had attended in Tuebingen 
during his student days, had already propounded in 
briefer form some of the ideas which Moehler de- 
veloped with so much brilliance in the Symbolik. 
Drey had called attention especially to the true 
mean between the divine and the human, the 
natural and supernatural, the subjective and the 
objective, and between mysticism and intellectual- 
ism, which is found in the Catholic faith as distin- 
guished from the extremes of hyperspiritualism and 
rationalism found in Protestantism. 

Moehler’s method in the Symbolik is both histori- 
cal and systematic. His power of synthesis, group- 
ing many varied details under principles which are 
unified among themselves, is here at its height. The 
historical basis which forms the groundwork of his 
systematic construction is everywhere prominent. 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 265 


It stamps the Symbolik with a character of objec- 
tivity and imparts to it a power of conviction which 
are unsurpassed. The serene calm with which Moeh- 
ler discusses the dogmatic differences between 
Catholics and Protestants reaches the high level of 
scholasticism; and by everywhere applying the 
principle of historical induction, he puts the master 
weapon of modern science into the defence of the 
faith. Not since Bellarmin and Bossuet did the 
Church have a champion who pressed the attack 
with such vigor upon the principles and conse- 
quences of the doctrines of the Reformers. 

The purpose of the Symbolik is irenical, for 
Moehler was deeply convinced that the cleavage 
in religion which the Reformation had caused in 
Germany had harmed the country in many ways. 
He believed also that the cause of religious peace, 
if not reunion, would be served best by showing and 
refuting in their connection the principles which 
caused this opposition to the ancient faith. Because 
he always grants the good faith and the deep reli- 
gious spirit of his opponents, his own sincerity is 
the more apparent. It is hardly too much to say 
that the Symbolik is the best theological criticism 
of the doctrinal and philosophical principles of the 
Reformers which was produced by Catholic scholar- 
ship in Germany. 

Two thirds of the Symbolik is given over to the 
discussion of the doctrines of the Lutheran and the 
Reformed churches. The remainder is devoted prin- 
cipally to the teaching of the Methodists, Baptists, 


266 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Friends, and Swedenborgians. Moehler’s plan is to 
present the opposition between Catholic and Protes- 
tant doctrine first by comparing their teaching on 
the original state of man, his fall, and its disastrous 
consequences for mankind. Then he enters into the 
discussion of the doctrine of justification, which is 
the heart of the controversy. From this he proceeds 
to expound the influence of the two religious faiths 
upon the interior life of their adherents. He con- 
cludes by a study of their teaching on the Church. 
Moehler takes the material for his work from the 
symbolic documents of the Catholic and Protestant 
churches. He constantly recurs to the writings of the 
Reformers in order to determine the meaning of 
Protestant symbolic documents. In determining the 
teaching of the Reformers, he proceeds with great 
circumspection. In the case of Luther, Moehler is 
well aware of Luther’s fickleness, his impression- 
ability, and his exaggerations. Hence he lays down 
the principle that Luther’s teaching must be deter- 
mined by the general trend of his writings rather 
than by isolated statements. The decrees and canons 
of the Council of Trent are the standard by which 
Moehler judges the doctrines of the Reformers. 
Liturgies, prayers, and hymns are not used as 
symbolic sources, because their terms often lack 
theological precision. The writings of individual 
Catholic theologians are not given the same value 
in explaining Catholic doctrine as is accorded to 
those of the Reformers in the interpretation of 
Protestant symbolic documents; for Catholic theo- 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 267 


logical writings are private attempts of individual 
scholars to expound the faith which they presuppose 
but do not determine, whereas the writings of the 
Reformers are the constitutive sources of Protes- 
tantism. Followers of the Reformers had often for- 
gotten this, because their doctrinal systems are 
founded on individual opinions elevated to the rank 
of universal truths. The Reformers took over into 
their doctrinal systems certain parts of the ancient 
faith, because these items agreed with their personal 
views. 

Furthermore, according to the Symbolik the Re- 
formation owed its rise and progress partly to its 
attacks on abuses in the Church, and partly to its 
opposition to certain theological theories which had 
found favor in some Catholic schools of theology. 
In this connection Moehler remarks that the Church 
always combated the abuses which arose, and that 
she cannot be held responsible for private opinions 
fostered by individuals among her members. The 
Reformers confused these abuses and opinions with 
the precepts and doctrines of the Church; here 
again they confused the particular with the uni- 
versal. 

The effects of Moehler’s Symbolik were far-reach- 
ing though they are not easily determined in detail. 
The sale of five editions of this work in six years 
is evidence of its wide diffusion in Germany. The 
first edition was translated into English almost im- 
mediately upon publication by James Burton 
Robertson (London, Dolman, 1832). Lachat’s 


268 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


French version is rather a paraphrase than a trans- 
lation (3rd edition, Brussels, Fonteyn, 1853). There 
is also an Italian translation. In Germany primarily 
the Symbolik did much to remove prejudice, to 
strengthen the convictions of Catholics and their 
confidence in the Church, to destroy indifferentism, 
and to win for Catholic scholarship its rightful place 
in the world of science. A number of distinguished 
converts found their way into the Church through 
the study of its enlightening pages. Among them 
are numbered Hurter the historian, Hammerstein 
the apologist, Bickell the philologist, and the Duke 
Victor de Broglie. Newman may have come under 
the influence of the Symbolik though there is no 
direct proof of the fact. 

For Moehler himself the Symbolik had other 
effects, which were far from comforting. While 
Marheineke and Nitzsch replied to it with a dig- 
nified defence of the Protestant position, Baur’s 
polemical diatribe is disfigured by unwarranted per- 
sonal attacks, which stirred up the notorious furor 
theologicus, but did not further the scientific study 
of the questions under discussion. Hence it has long 
been consigned to well-merited oblivion by all par- 
ties. In 1835 the king of Wuertemberg commanded 
a report on the Symbolik by a prominent Protestant 
churchman. In consequence of the opinion rendered 
by this divine, he forbade Moehler to write on cer- 
tain subjects as long as the latter remained in Tue- 
bingen. When Altenstein, the Prussian minister of 
worship, offered Moehler a professorship in Bonn, 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 269 


it was also on condition that he remain silent on 
topics which were likely to arouse controversy. 
Moehler preferred his liberty to what he termed a 
well-furnished prison for his faith and accepted a 
position in Munich. 

The works of Moehler’s last years are preliminary 
studies for a general history of the Church, which 
he intended to be his opus magnum. In 1831 he 
published the Versuch ueber den Ursprung des 
Gnostizismus in the commemorative volume of the 
university of Tuebingen for the golden jubilee of 
G. J. Planck, professor of Evangelical theology in 
Goettingen. This codperation with the Protestant 
section of the university was a truly Christian reply 
to the hostile attitude of his brethren of the cloth 
among the Evangelicals. In this essay Moehler sets 
up the theory that gnosticism originated from a 
morbid Christian contempt for the world and a 
pathological Christian asceticism. Moehler’s old 
adversary Baur and his respected friend Neander 
of Berlin had no difficulty in showing that gnosti- 
cism is a pagan creation. Further research has 
shown that it is a syncretistic product of an expir- 
ing paganism, and that it owes its origin to the un- 
disciplined speculation of the hellenistic intellect. 

In 1830 Moehler published a series of articles in 
the Theologische Quartalschrift, entitled Ueber das 
Verhaeliniss des Islams zum Evangelium. Lacking 
original sources, he shared the views of his contem- 
poraries, who overestimated the civilizing influence 
of Mohammedanism and the willingness of its ad- 


270 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


herents to embrace Christianity. In 1834 he pub- 
lished Bruchstuecke aus der Geschichte der Aufhe- 
bung der Sklavereit, which appears to be the first 
detailed study of this important subject based on 
original sources; but it is antiquated to-day. The 
delightful sketch Geschichte des Moenchtums in der 
Zeit seiner Entstehung und ersten Ausbildung ap- 
peared in 1836 and 1837. The asceticism and mysti- 
cism of the monks had a fascination for Moehler 
from his youth. He had planned to write the history 
of the civilizing influence of the Benedictines, of 
whom he had previously written with sympathy in 
his Athanasius and Anselm of Canterbury. The 
promise which he did not live to fulfill was realized 
in Montalembert’s Monks of the West.’ 

Moehler’s Kirchengeschichte shows us rather his 
capacity than his achievements, since it is a mosaic 
of students’ notes extending over a period of thir- 
teen years and unified by Gams. The true Moehler 
is apparent in its brilliant narrative, its striking de- 
scription, its penetrating analysis, its telling char- 
acterization of large spans of history, and its ap- 
preciation of the religious and cultural influence of 
leading personalities. In the Patrologie oder christ- 
liche Literaergeschichte Moehler’s work is indis- 
tinguishable from that of his friend and editor, 
Reithmayr. In its published form it is merely a 
chronological series of finished biographies with an 
elaborate general introduction. Besides the biog- 
raphy each subject contains an analysis of the writ- 
er’s works and a summary of his doctrinal views. 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER yy Bt 


The lack of pragmatic exposition and systematic 
grouping is explained by the unfinished character of 
the work. Moehler was the first Catholic scholar in 
Germany to put patrology on a scientific basis. His 
Patrology is a combination of the literary and theo- 
logical history of the Fathers and later Christian 
writers. His division of patrology thus conceived 
(and also of Church history) into a Greek-Roman 
(1-8 century), a Germanic (8-15 century), and a 
Roman-Greek-Germanic period was rejected, partly 
because it is too vague and extensive, and partly be- 
cause it fails to recognize the fundamental impor- 
tance and the unique character of ancient Christian 
literature. 

Moehler’s conception of the task of the historian 
of the Church included not only the study of Church 
history proper, but also the history of dogma, of 
religion in general, of canon law, exegesis, and apolo- 
getics. He placed these historical sciences on a par 
with systematic theology. 

Moehler and Doellinger are the founders of the 
Catholic school of history in Germany. They were 
contemporaries and friends. Moehler flashed across 
the sky of the nineteenth century like a blazing 
meteor, and his memory is held in benediction; to 
Doellinger was granted length of years beyond the 
usual span of human life, but he declined in faith 
and scholarship. How great Moehler’s achievements 
would have become had Providence granted him the 
ninety-one years accorded to Doellinger! Doellinger 
was superior to his friend in the keenness of his 


272 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


intellect, the depth of his criticism, and the power 
of historical combination; but Moehler towered 
above the Munich historian by the noble qualities 
of his heart, his mature judgment, his objective atti- 
tude toward the problems of history, and the en- 
thusiasm of his mind. Doellinger was a realist in 
history; Moehler was an idealist. It is from Moeh- 
ler that Catholic historical scholarship in Germany 
takes its rise. The Catholic school of Tuebingen 
stands on his shoulders, and all who have profited 
by Germany’s Catholic historical scholarship are 
his debtors. 

Moehler’s theory of the method of historical 
studies cannot be fixed in a formula. He was largely 
self-taught and possessed the method and the mind 
of a discoverer. The ideal historian, he says, pos- 
sesses the rare but characteristic gift of abstract- 
ing from present conditions and of placing himself 
sympathetically and forgetful of himself into the 
period of which he is writing. He does not project 
his ideas into the facts, for by doing so he would 
subjectivize the facts and observe them through a 
medium constructed by himself. Historical study be- 
comes a science when it attains a thorough knowl- 
edge of the connection and interaction of a group 
of facts. 

It was one of Moehler’s deepest convictions that 
the study of sources is the first requisite of histori- 
cal scholarship. The best, and indeed the only 
method of procedure, he says, is to see and search 
for oneself. The second quality of the historian is 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 273 


veracity. The best defence of a good cause, he says 
again, is the honest study and truthful presentation 
of it. Another quality of the historian of the Church 
is the Catholic sense. Moehler rejects Vorausset- 
zungslosigkeit as the foolish delusion of rational- 
ism. One who writes the history of the Church must 
take his stand within the Church and work himself 
into her spirit. How can one understand the Church, 
he asks, if one possesses only fragments of the truth 
and views the Church with the eyes of an enemy? 
Failing to see the supernatural guidance and work- 
ings of the Church, the historian will fail also to 
present its human aspect correctly, and perhaps 
record it as a chronicle of scandal. Without faith 
the historian of the Church is like a man without a 
soul, 

Furthermore Moehler insists on the genetic pres- 
entation of history. To be satisfactory, history must 
be written according to the genetic method, not 
viewing facts as accidents, but presenting them as 
events in their origin and genesis, their mutual in- 
fluence and dependence. In the spirit of this prin- 
ciple Moehler endeavored to present the historical 
continuity of the Church, the organic development 
of her doctrines from the objective data of revela- 
tion, and her expansion in virtue of her divine 
endowments. 

Moehler was much impressed by the influence of 
great ideas upon the course of history. Not only 
was he well acquainted with the contemporary Ger- 
man and French literature on the subject, but he 


274 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


was also in contact, since his literary travels of 
1822, with the principal exponents of this method 
of historiography. Planck and Neander were writ- 
ing history according to the idealistic method, and 
Moehler fell under their spell. After hearing 
Neander, the star of Planck, whom he had praised 
with youthful enthusiasm in his letters, began to 
pale before the greater luminary of Berlin. Moeh- 
ler’s conception of the philosophy of history as the 
working out of the architectonic ideas which domi- 
nate the course of events, was drawn immediately 
from Neander’s pioneer monographs of St. Bernard 
(1813), St. John Chrysostom (1821-1822), and 
Tertullian (1825), which he reviewed at length in 
the Theologische Quartalschrift. 

Ultimately this conception of history was derived 
from Hegel. Moehler purged it of its subjectivism 
and of most of its apriorism, though he occasionally 
involved himself in artificial constructions of history. 
Whatever his faults, he was the first to apply this 
fruitful method to the writing of Catholic history. 
Generally speaking, his method is correct, because 
there is a guiding Providence which directs the 
course of the world to the end for which it was 
created. Adopting the words of Johannes von Muel- 
ler, Moehler says, “‘ Christ is the point of departure 
and the last end, and consequently also the center of 
all history.”” Moehler was so convinced of the cor- 
rectness of this philosophy of history that he said in 
the preface to the first edition of his first publica- 
tion, “It is so impossible to attempt a historical 


JOHANN ADAM MOEHLER 275 


construction without any connection with a higher 
idea which contains and permeates all history, that 
I would rather abandon all history than surrender 
the conviction of its progressive development from 
within.” Yet his conception of history was not sub- 
jectivistic, for he says further, “ We want ideas 
drawn from tradition, not tradition fashioned ac- 
cording to an idea.” To his mind history is the plan 
of God with mankind, an eternal plan developing 
in time. By this plan God prepares for Himself in 
mankind through the mediation of Christ the honor 
and glory due Him, and resulting from the freely 
given homage of men. The dominating purpose of 
Moehler’s history is to portray the Church as the 
spiritual power directing all things and permeating 
all the activities of mankind. The Church is the 
divinely constituted mother and guide of all the 
faithful, whose temporal vicissitudes manifest the 
operation of God’s Providence. 

Moehler’s career was a series of great beginnings. 
They were the great and forward, though sometimes 
faltering steps of a pioneer, as the sequel showed. 
The future of Church history is bound up with the 
inductive and philosophical study of the subject in 
which he pointed the way. 


276 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


WoERNER, J. A. Moehler, ein Lebensbild. Edited by P. B. 
Gams, O.S.B., 1886. | 

FriepricH, J. A. Moehler der Symboliker. Ein Beitrag 
zu seinem Leben und seiner Lehre aus seinen eigenen 
und anderen ungedruckten Papieren (Munich, 
1894). 

KNOEPFLER, J. A. Moehler. Ein Gedenkblatt zu dessen 
hunderistem Geburtstag (Munich, 1896). 

A. v. ScuMip, Der Geistige Entwicklungsgang J. A. 
Moehlers, in the Historisches Jahrbuch, Vol. 18 
(1897), Pp. 322-356, 572-599. 

Govau, Moehler. (La Pensée Chrétienne) (Paris, 1905). 

LorscH, Moehlers Lehre von der Entwicklung des Dog- 
mas in the Theologische Quartalschrift, Vol. 99 
(1917-1918), pp. 28-59, 129-152. 

BIHLMEYER, Moehler als Kirchenhistoriker, in the Theo- 
logische Quartalschrift, Vol. 100 (1919), pp. 134- 
198. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON MOEHLER 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


Besides the above biographical sketches, all of which 
contain commentaries on Moehler’s historical writings, 
the following may be added: 

Goocu, History and Historians in the Nineteenth Cen- 
tury (London, 1920). 

EDMOND VERMEIL, Jean-Adam Mohler et Vécole catho- 
ligue de Tubingue (1815-1840). Etude sur la théo- 
logie romantique en Wurtemberg et les origines ger- 
maniques du modernisme (Paris, 1913). 

A. Fonck, Mohler et V’école catholique de Tubingue in 
the Revue des Sciences Religieuses, VI, 2 (April, 
1926), pp. 250-266. 


LINGARD (1771-1851) 


Rey. Epwin J. Ryan, S.T.D. 
Catholic University of America 


N speaking of Lingard one is confronted with a 
problem which while it implies a tribute to his 
KB greatness constitutes none the less a real diffi- 
culty. I refer to the danger of seeming to exaggerate 
his claims. For the more we consider the man’s 
work, especially when account is taken of the cir- 
cumstances in which it was accomplished, the more 
intense becomes our admiration and the more com- 
pelling the impulse to voice that admiration and to 
increase in others that sentiment of gratitude which 
all students must feel. At the same time I should 
not care to appear in the role of a mere enthusiast 
chanting a paean of praise “‘like a tale of little mean- 
ing though the words are strong’; hence I shall en- 
deavour to confine my effort to pointing out those 
of his claims which I am confident are acknowledged 
by everyone who has studied his History, and espe- 
cially by those who have utilized it as a basis for 
their instruction of others. So, if in the end I shall 
have said too little rather than too much I trust my 
reader will impute it not to deficient appreciation but 
to a prudent solicitude not to injure his fame by 
Over-praise. | 
First let us consider the time in which he pro- 
duced his great work, viz., the second and the third 
277 


¢ 


278 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


decades of the nineteenth century. The Catholic 
body in England had then but recently emerged 
from its seclusion and the emergence was far from 
complete. Relief had been granted in grudging bits 
during the last quarter of the century preceding 
but entire emancipation was still in the future and 
English Catholics were still a race apart, taking 
little share in the national life and many of them 
content to be regarded by the ruling Protestant 
majority as harmless. That they possessed any in- 
tellectual force, any scholars who might compare 
with the graduates of the two Universities, was not 
suspected. The genuine learning that had flourished 
among the English Catholics on the Continent from 
the days of Elizabeth to the French Revolution 
was a Sealed book to most Englishmen; which clari- 
fies the commonplace of History that contempt had 
something to do with bringing on the partial relief 
of the eighteenth century. Even those Catholics 
who like Milner wrote for and ¢o Protestants se- 
cured but a fraction of the audience they ought to 
have enjoyed. Hence an English Catholic who 
would set out to re-write the whole history of his 
country and expect a hearing might well have ap- 
peared to many of his co-religionists, and those far 
from the least worthy, as embarked upon an enter- 
prise which if it should attract attention at all would 
but irritate the adversary and thereby delay those 
further measures of justice so eagerly yearned for. 

This brings us to the consideration of the in- 
ternal condition of the Catholic body; and to indi- 


A 


LINGARD 279 


cate the spirit that animated at least a portion 
thereof probably no more graphic method will be 
found than to mention the Cisalpine Club. To the 
student of English Catholic history this name will 
suffice to conjure up the bitter and at times scan- 
dalous state of mind of many prominent Catholics 
of Lingard’s day—their inharmonious relations 
with the hierarchy, their tampering with the spir- 
itual allegiance of the clergy, their faulty methods 
of attempting a compromise with the government, 
and (which is not the least of their failings) their 
excessive fear of arousing antagonism by any manly 
assertion of their rights or any open presentation 
of Catholic teaching. In 1819, the year when the 
first volume of Lingard’s History of England ap- 
peared, the probably unsympathetic attitude of 
such Catholics was a danger to be reckoned with; 
for, coming as it did from within, it was even more 
likely to wreck the enterprise than the bitter an- 
tagonism of open and avowed enemies. Lest this be 
deemed an exaggeration I cite the significant fact 
that of the two Catholic publishers to whom the 
work was offered one would not give more than 
£300 and the other refused to touch it at all. 
That despite these considerations Lingard went 
ahead and succeeded is a testimony not to the man’s 
courage only but to his keen insight as well. For it 
can not be said that he was unaware of the difficul- 
ties in his path and that therefore his success was 
but a happy accident of ignorance. On the con- 
trary, Lingard knew well the state of affairs, for 


280 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


he is among that band of historians who have not 
only written history but helped to make it. From 
his return to his native land in 1793 to the appear- 
ance of his History and even on to his death in 
1851, far from being a scholarly recluse, he was an 
active participant in ecclesiastical affairs, consulted 
by bishops and on at least one occasion refusing a 
mitre for himself. Knowing then as he did the 
mind of contemporary Catholics, he displayed some- 
thing akin to statesmanship when he calmly pro- 
ceeded to correct the Protestant tradition of his- 
tory and to set before the English people, Catholic 
and Protestant, the true story. The poet teaches 
us that “the better part of valour is discretion.” 
But what is “discretion” ? Is it mere pusillani- 
mous timidity? Or does it not lie oftentimes in a 
bold sallying forth into the lists in a chivalrous 
pursuit of the enemy? Discretion can assume many 
forms; and he is truly valorous who can discern 
which particular form is demanded by the circum- 
stances he is summoned to meet. That Lingard 
gauged the situation so accurately and so aptly is 
not the least among the evidences of his fitness for 
his task. 

Secondly, let us consider the spirit animating his 
History. 1 have already alluded to the scholarship 
that had flourished among the English Catholics on 
the Continent during the penal days. But from the 
untoward circumstances this learning had perforce 
assumed a controversial cast; the exiles could not 
afford to devote much attention to loftier purposes. 


LINGARD 281 


They had to fight; and while the employment of 
the resources of learning in the attack on error is 
in itself noble, it is not the rdle wherein intellectual 
activity appears to best advantage. It can never be 
more than a painful, if necessary, evil; and prob- 
ably the chief drawback lies in the baneful influ- 
ence it exercises on those very persons who even 
from the loftiest motives so employ their gifts. For 
controversy is sadly apt to beget narrowness of 
mind and a dangerous readiness to sacrifice strict 
accuracy to an immediate advantage over the ad- 
versary. Exaggeration of one’s opponent’s difficul- 
ties and the minimizing of one’s own are but too 
familiar phenomena in controversial writing, while 
a tone of Christian charity and courtesy is not 
exactly among its characteristics. I fear it must be 
allowed that such shortcomings are not confined 
to Protestants; at the risk of seeming ungenerous 
to those doughty champions who in a dark era 
waged war for Catholicism, we are constrained to 
admit that they did not keep themselves entirely 
unspotted from the stains of the arena. 

Now, observe in how different a spirit Lingard ap- 
proached the task of writing History. He had all the 
zeal of the knight-errant and all the fearlessness; but 
in addition to these and to that insight into condi- 
tions already touched upon, he had a whole-hearted 
devotion to Truth and with it a realization that this 
devotion, far from being a hindrance, could be 
turned into an ally in winning the Protestant mind. 
Years before he set out to chronicle the story of 


282 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


England he wrote in reference to his Antiquities 
of the Anglo-Saxon Church: “The great event of 
the Reformation, while it gave a new impulse to the 
powers, embittered with rancour the writings of the 
learned. Controversy pervaded every department of 
literature; and history, as well as the sister sciences, 
was alternately pressed into the service of the con- 
tending parties. . . . My object is truth.” These 
words would apply equally well to the History of 
England. For despite the scrutiny to which the 
work was subjected by non-Catholic critics no case 
of prejudice or of wilful misrepresentation was 
made out. The favourable critiques, like those in 
the Edinburgh Review, the Westminster Review 
and the Monthly Review, and the unfavourable, 
such as that in Blackwood’s, agree in recognizing 
the author’s purpose to present a true picture and 
his sincerity at least is unquestioned. And a few 
months after the first three volumes appeared he 
returns to this topic in a private letter: “‘ Through 
the work I made it a rule to tell the truth, whether 
it made for us or against us.” Thus he sounded a 
new note in English historiography. Beside Lin- 
gard such writers as Hume and (to anticipate) 
Macaulay, for all their brilliance, sink to the level 
of partisan scribes. And if today such pseudo- 
historians no longer obtain credence we owe that 
largely to Lingard. 

But we must record regretfully that this honesty 
was not hailed universally; among the various re- 
views there was one loudly-discordant note sounded, 


LINGARD 283 


and that by one of his own household. Bishop Mil- 
ner had long been known as a rather vehement de- 
fender of Catholics and his ardour had led him into 
precisely those errors which we spoke of a few pages 
back as of frequent occurrence among controver- 
sialists. To him History was but a weapon and he 
was not too particular as to how or to what extent 
he adapted the weapon to his purpose. Being there- 
fore of a type quite different from Lingard he was 
disappointed on reading the History to find that it 
was not of that vehement kind which he so desid- 
erated. He vented his wrath in the pages of the 
Orthodox Journal, declaring that the work was not 
“such as our calumniated and depressed condition 
calls for”; and later in conversation he called it 
“a bad book only calculated to confirm Protestants 
in their errors.” It is not necessary to dwell on this 
incident in detail. Time has shown which of the 
two men had the more correct notion of History. 
It is difficult to imagine any Protestant ‘‘ confirmed 
in his errors ” by reading Lingard; on the contrary, 
his work has proved a veritable arsenal in the war 
on error, which it would never have become had it 
been written.to suit the taste of Milner. For to his 
devotion to Truth Lingard added a prudence for- 
eign to the mind of Milner. In his own words: “I 
have been careful to defend the catholics, but not 
so as to hurt the feelings of the protestants. Indeed 
my object has been to write such a work, if pos- 
sible, as should be read by protestants: under the 
idea, that the more it is read by them, the less 


284 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Hume will be in vogue, and consequently the fewer 
prejudices against us will be imbibed from him.” 
And again: “ [I made it a rule] to avoid all ap-_ 
pearance of controversy, that I might not repel 
protestant readers; and yet to furnish every neces- 
sary proof in our favour in the notes; so that if 
you compare my narrative to Hume’s, for example, 
you will find that, with the aid of the notes, it is a 
complete refutation of him without appearing to be 
so. This I thought preferable. In my account of the 
Reformation I must say much to shock protestant 
prejudices; and my only chance of being read by 
them depends upon my having the reputation of a 
temperate writer.” This led him to omit in the 
first edition matter included later, but there was 
nothing that amounted to falsification. He was fol- 
lowing what he considered a dictate of common 
sense; and that his work did thereby gain readers 
among Protestants we shall presently see. 

In the meantime we must consider another point. 
Love of truth will not by itself make an historian. 
He must know how to discover the truth. And in 
this connection we may say without exaggeration 
that Lingard is positively the first of modern Eng- 
lish historians to go to the sources. I shall quote 
him again: “In the pursuit of Truth I have made 
it a religious duty to consult the original historians. 
Who would draw from the troubled stream when 
he may drink at the fountain head?” Today these 
words sound like a truism: in those days they were 
almost a revelation. For to his time no historian in 


LINGARD 285 


England had dreamed of going to any such trouble 
as “‘a religious duty” or any other kind of duty. 
The anti-Catholic tradition had been carefully elab- 
orated and handed on in print from generation to 
generation. The method was to begin with a pre- 
conception of what the writer wanted to prove, cull 
from printed books such statements as harmonized 
with his prejudices, colour them with his own inter- 
pretation, and present them (if he could) in the 
glamour of a polished style. History had degen- 
erated into a mere literary genre, a handmaid of 
creed or of party, a rostrum of philosophy, any- 
thing but the school of truth. It was Lingard who 
changed all that by the process, simple with the 
simplicity of genius, of testing every statement, 
verifying every reference, going back, not to those 
who wrote only what they were inclined to write or 
were ordered to write, but to those who stood near- 
est the events and whose knowledge and character 
gave assurance that they knew what they told and 
told what they knew. 

And for a man to hark back to sources was no 
easy feat in those days. Every historiographer who 
knows his craft does that now, but consider the 
situation a hundred years ago. State archives, pri- 
vate collections and the like now available were 
closed then or could be consulted only at consider- 
able inconvenience, and many were not even known 
to exist. This, coupled with the fact that Lingard, 
like Creighton, did most of his labour in a remote 
rural parish, leaves one marvelling at his success; 


286 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


for despite the vast amount of original material 
since become available, no substantial alteration of 
any important part of his History of England has 
been found necessary. If I may be indulged in a 
personal reference: About fifteen years ago I had 
occasion to prepare a set of lectures on the English 
Reformation. I first made up my notes from Lin- 
gard and then proceeded to correct them in the light 
of what had been produced by later historians who 
had access to sources more copious than those at 
his disposal. I found that no real correction was 
necessary but that when my work was finished all 
I owed to the more recent writers was a greater 
fulness of detail, the narrative of Lingard standing 
firm and immovable. 

And now after praising him I have to record one 
point wherein we must all dissent from him. In a 
letter written in 1850, about a year before he died, 
we find the following: ” I have long had the notion 
—a very presumptuous one, probably — that the 
revolution in the protestant mind as to the doctrines 
of popery was owing to my History. Young and 
inquisitive minds in the Universities were induced 
to examine my authorities concerning their favour- 
ite religious opinions; and finding me correct began 
to doubt of their convictions. This is very presump- 
tuous in me.” I consider that in that last sentence 
he lapsed into error. In entertaining the notion that 
he had revolutionized the Protestant attitude he 
was far from presumptuous, for that was the opin- 
ion of most persons at the time. One of his friends, 


LINGARD 287 


Mr. Darcy Talbot, ascribed to Lingard’s History 
of England many of the conversions that occurred 
about that time among students of Oxford and 
Cambridge. And where the work did not lead to 
conversion it at least contributed enormously to 
destroy prejudice. Ever since it appeared there has 
been an improved tone among educated Protestants. 

Great indeed is our debt to him for his scholarly 
achievement. Still I venture to say that we owe 
him an even greater debt for the example he has 
left us of sterling courage in facing difficulties — 
limitation of opportunity, paucity of resources, op- 
position from within and from without. Herein he 
shines forth as possessing that strength of charac- 
ter without which the loftiest genius may be futile, 
and the possession of which renders his life a kind 
of exegesis of Goethe’s immortal line: “In dem 
Begrentzen zeigt sich der Meister.” 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


The only adequate biography of Lingard is that by 
MARTIN HaILE and Epwin Bonney. Life and Letters of 
John Lingard (1771-1851). London, 1911. A_ bibliog- 
raphy (ibid., pp. 383-388) gives an authentic list of Lin- 
gard’s published works. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON LINGARD 


The Cambridge History of English Literature (Vol. 
XIV. pp. 54-59) gives an estimate of Lingard’s histori- 


288 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


cal work. Interesting details of the reception of his His- 
tory of England will be found in GiLLow, Biographical 
Dictionary of the English Catholics, Vol. IV, pp. 254- 
278. Articles on his Works are in the London Times, for 
July 21-28, 1851; the Dublin Review, Vol. VIII, p. 334, 
XII, p. 312; Brownson’s Quarterly Review, for January 
and July, 1855. Cf. also The Making of Lingard’s His- 
tory, in the Ushaw Magazine, Vol: XIX (1909). A recent 
estimate is GurmLDAY, John Lingard, in America for Jan. 
22 TO a 


HERGENROETHER (1824-1890) 


Rev. HERMAN C. FiscHEr, PH.D. 
Pontifical College Josephinum, Columbus, O. 


OSEPH ADAM GUSTAV HERGENROE- 
THER? was born at Wuerzburg, Bavaria, on 
the 15th of September, 1824, the son of Dr. 
John Jacob Hergenroether, professor of medi- 

cine at the University of Wuerzburg, and of Eva 
Maria Horsch, daughter of the Medical Councillor 
and Professor Philipp Joseph Horsch of the same 
city, Joseph was one of fourteen children, seven of 
whom died in early youth, while three of the remain- 
ing seven, Joseph, Philipp, and Franz, rose to posi- 
tions of distinctiomin the Church. 

In consequence of political events the elder Her- 
genroether found himself compelled to resign his 
chair of medicine at the University and to take up 


1 We have no biography of Cardinal Hergenroether. His ex- 
tremely valuable and interesting correspondence has not been 
published as yet. This sketch of his life is based mainly on 
STAMMINGER, Zum  Gedaechtnisse Cardinal Hergenroethers 
(Herder, 1892), and on the articles of Hemvricu in Der Katholik 
(1890, 2), pp. 480 sq. and of HoLiweck in the Historisch-po- 
litisiche Blaetter (1890), pp. 721 sq. 

We have also consulted with profit the articles on Hergen- 
roether in the Catholic Encyclopedia (Msgr. Kirsch) and in the 
Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Lauchert). Above all, however, 
we have tried to give an interpretation of his works, in as far 
as they have been accessible to us. For the general historical 
background the reader may consult BrurcKx, Geschichte der 
katholischen Kirche in Deutschland im neunzehnten Jahrhundert, 
Vols. 3 and 4, and GRANDERATH, Geschichte des vatikanischen 
Konzils, 3 vols. 


289 


290 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the duties of a physician at Marktheidenfeld.’ In 
the popular schools of that village Joseph received 
his elementary education. Under the solicitous in- 
struction of his father and of the venerable pastor 
of Marktheidenfeld, Georg Christian Uhrig, young 
Hergenroether made such progress in Latin and 
the other branches commonly taught in the Ger- 
man Lateinschule, that he was enabled to finish his 
college course at the Gymnasium of Wuerzburg 
within four years and to leave there in 1842 with 
splendid testimonials. Here he laid the foundations 
of that solid and extensive philological knowledge 
which was to stand him in such good stead in later 
years. He now gave two years to the study of phi- 
losophy at the University of Wuerzburg, devoting 
part of his time, however, to the courses of the pro- 
fessor of dogmatic theology, Andreas Deppisch, and 
to those of the exegete, Valentin Reissman, in later 
years Bishop of Wuerzburg (1871-75). 

During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and a part of 
the eighteenth century numerous German youths 
had wended their way to the Eternal City to pre- 
pare for the priesthood in the famous institution, 
founded by St. Ignatius, the Collegium Germani- 
cum. But the philosophy and theology of the 
Enlightenment and the succeeding revolutionary 
movements had placed a barrier between Rome and 
Germany and severed to a great extent the intimate 
relations hitherto existing between the Roman See 


2 Cf. STEINER, Der Episkopat der Gegenwart in Lebensbildern 
dargestellt: Cardinal Hergenroether (Wuerzburg, Woerl, 1883). 


HERGENROETHER 291 


and the German clergy. The Enlightenment had 
cast a spiritual and religious blight over the whole 
of Germany. Men like Moehler, Klee, and others, 
to whom we owe the revival of Catholic Theology 
in Germany, had to seek their way upwards 
through their own exertions, so to say, without liv- 
ing guides; their teachers were the great dead of 
the past centuries and their works. Hergenroether 
was more fortunate. The readjustment of ecclesias- 
tical conditions and the Concordats entered into by 
the Holy See with the different German states in the 
first half of the nineteenth century had reopened 
the way to Rome to aspiring German ecclesiastics. 
Georg Anton v. Stahl, Bishop of Wuerzburg, had 
already sent Denzinger and Hettinger to the Col- 
legium Germanicum, of which the bishop himself 
had formerly been an inmate, and in 1844 Hergen- 
roether, having finished his philosophical studies 
and acceding to the wish of his bishop, followed 
them there. The cosmopolitan character of the 
Eternal City, its art, its glorious Past and its rich 
and powerful Present made, as Hergenroether him- 
self assures us, a deep and lasting impression on 
his mind and heart. And these impressions were un- 
doubtedly strengthened by the fact that the years 
which Hergenroether spent in Rome were a time of 
storm and stress in the life of the Church: the last 
years of the firm, unyielding or, shall we say, obsti- 
nate Gregory XVI, so full of dark forebodings, and 
the beginnings of the Pontificate of the mild Pius 
IX, beginnings so full of hope and promise for 


292 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Church and State and of dangers in the eyes of 
many.° ) 

At Rome Hergenroether spent four years (1844- 
1848) and followed the courses at the Collegium 
Romanum of such scholars as Perrone and Pas- 
saglia in dogmatic theology, Tomei in moral the- 
ology, Ballerini in Church history, Patrizi in exege- 
sis and Oriental languages, and Marzio in canon 
law. The Revolution of 1848 forced him to discon- 
tinue his studies before the acquisition of his degree 
in theology. After his ordination to the priest-. 
hood on the 28th of March, 1848, by Canali, 
Patriarch of Jerusalem, he returned to Germany, en- 
tered the seminary at Wuerzburg and resumed his 
theological studies at the University during the 
summer of 1848 and the winter of 1849. For about 
a year after this he devoted himself with great 
zeal to pastoral work, as curate of Zellingen, but 
his bishop desiring that he become a professor he 
entered the University of Munich in the May of 
1850. It was here that he and Ignaz v. Doellinger, 
even then a scholar of European fame and a star 
of the first magnitude at the University, met for 
the first time. “In the year 1850,” says Hollweck, 
in an appreciation of Hergenroether in the His- 
torische-politische Blaetter* “‘a young priest called 
on Doellinger and informed him of his intention of 
acquiring the degree of Doctor of Theology at the 
University, of Munich. Doellinger asked drily: 


8 STAMMINGER, EC. D.,.5. 8d, 
4 Vol. 106 (1890), p. 721 sq. 


HERGENROETHER 203 


‘Where did you make your studies?’ The answer 
was: ‘At Rome.’ ‘ Very well,’ said Doellinger with 
a sneer, ‘then you undoubtedly know some Latin? 
But how would it be, if I should use Greek in the 
Disputation? ’ ‘ If you wish, you may do so,’ replied 
the young priest. You may choose Hebrew or 
Syriac, if you see fit. I will not fail to answer.’ 
Doellinger was impressed. When on the 18th of 
July, 1850, after a splendid examination, Doellinger 
as Dean of the Faculty of Theology, placed the 
Doctor’s biretta on the brow of the young priest, 
he spoke the significant words: ‘Coronasti nos. 
Coronamus te.’ Doellinger and Hergenroether — 
this was the young Doctor’s name — were to meet 
again.” 

Hergenroether’s first writings of some importance 
were a treatise on The Trinitarian teaching of St. 
Gregory of Nazianz (1850), his dissertation for 
the Doctorate, and a thesis, entitled: De catholicae 
Ecclesiae primordiis recentiorum Protestantium sys- 
temata (1851), in which he defended the historic 
basis of the Church against the destructive criticism 
of the School of Tuebingen, and which he submitted 
to the Faculty of Theology of Munich, in order to 
qualify as privatdocent or instructor at the Univer- 
sity of that city. It was Doellinger himself, whose 
keen insight had immediately appraised at its true 
value the extraordinary ability of Hergenroether, 
who prevailed upon him to remain at Munich as 
instructor. From 1851-52 MHergenroether gave 


5 Regensburg, Manz (1850). 


294 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


courses at Munich in patrology and the theological 
virtues, and conducted disputatoria on dogmatic 
and moral theology. 

But his home city, Wuerzburg, to which he was 
much attached, was to receive him back. In Wuerz- 
burg the Theology of the Enlightenment had pos- 
sessed its keenest and most advanced representa- 
tive in Franz Berg, professor of Church history 
at the University of that city, a man who seems to 
have had no faith in the supernatural whatever and 
yet was freely permitted to instill his radical ideas 
into the minds of the young aspirants for the priest- 
hood during a period of twenty years (1789—-1809).° 
One shudders when one considers into what hands 
the training of ecclesiastics was frequently deliv- 
ered in that age. Berg’s immediate successors. in 
the chair of Church history at Wuerzburg, Joseph 
Leiniker and Franz Moritz, though not as impor- 
tant as he, were both suffering in a greater or lesser 
degree from the after effects of the great intellec- 
tual disease of the eighteenth century. Then fol- 
lowed John Baptist Schwab, the biographer of 
Berg, a brainy man and a scholar of note. But his 
critical, skeptical temper hindered Schwab from 
forming a firm opinion on the most important ques- 
tions, or, at all events, if he ever formed an opinion, 
he lacked the power of giving it adequate and final 
expression. This, of course, was bound to lead in 
time to friction with the Church authorities. It is 


6 On BERG compare the articles Professor Berg in Wuerzburg 
in the Historisch-politische Blaetter, Vol. 65 (1870), p. 54 sq. and 
185 sq. 


HERGENROETHER 295 


a remarkable fact that consequent upon an expert’s 
opinion, given by Doellinger, Schwab was deposed 
from his professorship of Church history at Wuerz- 
burg and Hergenroether called to take his place. 
On the 3d of November, 1852, Hergenroether was 
appointed professor extraordinary of Church history 
and canon law at the University of Wuerzburg; 
three years later (1855) he was promoted to the 
full possession of that chair. Speaking of these 
events Stamminger pertinently remarks: ‘‘ The 
hand of Providence is sometimes so clearly active in 
human affairs, that we cannot help seeing it. This 
was the case here. The young scholar Hergenroe- 
ther was to hear the Catholic Doellinger, before he 
was called to combat the apostate Doellinger. Doel- 
linger himself, who was wont to compare science 
with the spear of Telephus, which healed the 
wounds which it made, could hardly foresee at that 
time that the privatdocent whom he had recom- 
mended would one day wrest the wounding spear 
from his hand and use it in order to heal.” ? 
With real enthusiasm MHergenroether devoted 
himself to his duties as a teacher. At Wuerzburg he 
entered upon a different line of studies from that 
with which he had been occupied so far. Up till 
now he had given his attention mainly to dogmatic 
theology; from now on he was to teach Church his- 
tory, canon law, and patrology. His extensive and 
profound knowledge of dogmatic theology was 
naturally of the greatest service to him in these 


POLRNG. Dare 


296 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


branches. It gave him that keen sensitiveness for 
the correct solution in questions of canon law, that 
solidity and accuracy in the exposition of heresies 
or theological controversies which are so eminently 
characteristic of his historical writings. In canon 
law his strength lay in his exposition of the con- 
stitutional law of the Church: the potestas plenaria 
of the Roman Pontiff has never had a more bril- 
liant defender. In patrology he fascinated his hear- 
ers by his pertinent characterizations of the Fathers 
and ancient Christian writers. His vast theological 
erudition rested on a substructure of broad, general 
culture; he read his sources in the original language. 
The great revival in religious faith and life which 
Germany was experiencing when Hergenroether was 
appointed to his professorship, was also instrumen- 
tal in stimulating his enthusiasm and idealism and 
in giving wings to his ambition to do something 
worth while for the Church of Christ. 

From this time onward until his elevation to the 
Cardinalate—a period of twenty-eight years — 
Hergenroether devoted himself to his duties as a 
teacher with remarkable conscientiousness and ap- 
plication. How different was the University of 
Wuerzburg of 1855, of Hergenroether, Denziger, 
and Hettinger, from that of Berg! Adorned by 
these three great luminaries, the Alma Julia of 
Wuerzburg became a centre radiating sound, 
immaculate doctrine, and a nursery of priestly vir- 
tues and ecclesiastical spirit in numerous young 
men. 


HERGENROETHER 207 


Since we are here mainly concerned with Her- 
genroether, the historical writer, it will be impos- 
sible for us to give detailed attention to Hergen- 
roether’s activities in other fields, as for instance 
in the pulpit, as a speaker at the annual meetings 
of German Catholics, the so-called Katholikentage, 
which he frequently attended since 1863, and as a 
loyal friend and fosterer of Catholic societies in 
Germany. 

If the words of Stamminger “bene dixit’’—he 
was a great teacher —are true of Hergenroether, 
the words “bene scripsit ” are still more adequate. 
He was indeed a great writer. The fertility of his 
literary activities is astounding. His earlier writings 
were mainly polemical in nature. From whatever 
side the battalions marched against the Church, 
Hergenroether was always to be found on the bat- 
tlements, ready to meet the onslaught with his 
pen. i 

We have seen how, at the beginning of his teach- 
ing career, he gave his attention to the destructive 
tendencies of the Tuebingen School. The years 
1848-1870 were remarkable for incessant attacks 
on the part of political liberalism on the Temporal 
Power of the Pope. Numerous accusations were 
brought against the administration of the Papal 
States, while there was no end of the intrigues 
against the Papal Government and of the obstacles 
thrown in its way by its enemies. Hergenroether re- 
duced these accusations to their proper value and 
exposed these intrigues and maneuvres in his work 


298 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


on The Papal States Since the French Revolution.’ 
The ideas contained in this work had first been 
elaborated in a series of articles in the Historisch- 
politische Blaetter, and even in this earlier form 
had created a sensation in France and Italy. De- 
plorable was the attitude taken by certain Catholic 
theologians, notably by Doellinger, on this question 
of the Temporal Power of the Pope. It was un- 
doubtedly an act of disloyalty for Catholics to 
encourage the enemies of the Holy See by petty 
criticism and faultfinding at a time when attacks 
were coming from all sides. When in April and 
May, 1861, Doellinger in his famous lectures at the 
Odeum in Munich, later in the same year enlarged 
upon in his book Church and Churches, Papacy and 
The Papal States,’ made a veiled attack on the 
Temporal Power of the Pope, Hergenroether came 
back at him in a series of articles in the Katholik.™ 
It is extremely interesting to make a comparative 
study of Doellinger’s Papacy and The Papal States, 
and Hergenroether’s articles in the Katholik, and 
control the statements of the first by the answers 
of the other. The attentive reader of Doellinger’s 
Papacy and The Papal States cannot help feeling 
an undercurrent of bitterness against the Papacy 
running through the whole exposition, a bitterness, 


8 Der Kirchenstaat seit der franzoesischen Revolution (Herder, 
Freiburg, 1860). 

® Vol. 43, pp. 859, 971; Vol. 44, PP. 34, 97, 305, 365, 533, 663, 
756, 804, 877. 

10 Kirche und Kirchen, Papsttum und Kirchenstaat (Munich, 
1861). 

11 (1861) Vol. 1, p. 513 sqq. 


HERGENROETHER 299 


which, nine years later, was to develop into open 
rebellion. Doellinger sees everything through 
colored glasses: he seems to dwell with particular 
delight on the weaknesses and abuses of the Papal 
Government of the Roman States; there is hardly 
anything mentioned which would serve to relieve 
the gloom which settles down upon the mind while 
reading this book; there is nothing said as to the 
causes which might explain conditions, while at the 
same time exculpate the Holy See to a great extent; 
nor are the numerous benefits conferred upon the 
Roman territories by the Holy See in the course of 
centuries placed into the proper relief. We miss, 
therefore, in Doellinger that adjustment of light 
and shadow, which we should find in every histori- 
cal picture; we are only too often face to face with 
exaggerations, and, while generally speaking, we 
may admit the accuracy of Doellinger’s data, we 
find him at times accepting mere rumors and the 
gossip of irresponsible journalists in lieu of serious 
documentation. We have here in germ the outstand- 
ing faults which at a later period characterized 
Janus, the Roman Letters from the Council, and 
the mass of Old Catholic literature. In fact, we find 
here traces of that peculiar conception of Church 
history prevalent among the historiographers and 
professors of the eighteenth century, who in their 
writings and lectures reduced the history of the 
Church to a mere chronique scandaleuse and made 
of the Church itself a monstrous caricature. 
Hergenroether, on the other hand, admitting the 


300 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


substantial accuracy of many of Doellinger’s facts, 
tends to show, and, we believe, successfully, that 
some of the facts alleged had been given an undue 
importance, that the Holy See in many instances 
could not be held responsible for conditions, since 
it had been consistently thwarted by sinister influ- 
ences from within and without in its most benefi- 
cent purposes, while he at the same time places the 
manifold blessings which had come to the popula- 
tion of the Roman territories under the benign rule 
of the Pope-Kings into their proper perspective. 

When in 1864 Pius IX was faithlessly betrayed 
in the September Convention by Napoleon III and 
Victor Emmanuel IJ, and again on the occasion of 
the spoliation of 1870, Hergenroether raised his 
voice in behalf of the indefectible rights of the 
Holy See.*” 

A peaceful interlude in these controversies was 
Hergenroether’s patristic study Hippolytus or No- 
vatian? (1863), in which he successfully defended 
the opinion prevalent among German scholars 
against Armellini and others, that Hippolytus was 
the author of the Philosophoumena.** The stand he 
took on this question shows how unfounded was 
the slur, often cast upon him, that he was utterly 
dependent on the Jesuit schools for his scientific 
opinions. In his difference of opinion with Dr. Doel- 


12 Die franzoesisch-sardinische Uebereinkunft vom 15 Sept. 
1864 (Frankfurt a. M., 1865), and Denkschrift ueber die an dem 
Papste vollbrachte Gewalttat (Mainz, 1871). 

13 QOesterreich. Vierteljahresschrift fuer katholische Theologie, 
1863, Heft 3. Separately printed (Vienna, Braumueller, 1863). 


HERGENROETHER 301 


linger,** as to whether Hippolytus was also the 
author of the Smaller Labyrinth, in which discus- 
sion he took the negative, it may be said, in the 
light of what we know today, that Doellinger had 
the better of the argument.*” 

As early as 1854 Hergenroether had turned his 
attention to the life of Photius and the origins of 
the Greek Schism. Some of the results of his re- 
searches in the principal libraries of Europe for 
manuscript copies of the works of Photius were in- 
corporated in a publication entitled Photiw Constan- 
tinopolitani Liber de Spiritus Sancti Mystagogia.*® 
This was the first critical edition of this work of 
Photius on the Holy Ghost and His relation to the 
Father and the Son, and Hergenroether took occa- 
sion in his comments and footnotes to correct many 
of the false assertions of Photius at the hand of the 
Fathers and the early Christian writers. He con- 
tributed essays on the same work and on the 
Amphilochia to the Tuebinger Theol. Quartalschrift 
(1858). Also in the Migne edition of the works of 
Photius he took a prominent part and offered many 
textual emendations.*’ These studies of Hergenroe- 
ther in the fifties and sixties of the last century hap- 
pened to coincide with certain aspirations in Ger- 
many towards the creation of a National Church in 
intimate union with the State. We all know how 


14 DoELLINGER, Hippolytus und Kallistus, p. 6 sq. 

15 BARDENHEWER, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur, Vol. 
2, Po 516: 

16 Regensburg, Manz, 1857. 

17 P. G. Vols. 101-104 (1860) ; see Cath. Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, 
article Hergenroether. 


302 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Bismarck, who just at this time was rising to great- 
ness in the Prussian State, only a decade later made 
the fusion of the Protestant and Catholic Churches 
into one great national German Church one of the 
main points of his program in the Kulturkampf. 
Byzantine and Photian ideas were in the air; one 
heard Catholic writers openly accuse the Papacy of 
having caused the Greek Schism. This, for instance, 
was the thesis laid down by PICHLER in his History 
of the Separation of Eastern and Western Churches 
(1864).** Pichler was no mean opponent; he was 
well versed in the history, doctrine, canon law, and 
liturgy of the Eastern Churches. But when Her- 
genroether got through with him in a number of 
articles in the Chilianeum* and the Archiv fuer 
katholisches Kirchenrecht,” there was little leit of 
Pichler. In fact, if one wishes to get an idea of the 
vast erudition of Hergenroether in the domain of 
dogmatic theology, Church history, and canon law, 
one need not read through any of his larger works; 
it will be sufficient to page one or the other of his 
articles against Pichler, hidden away among the 
book reviews and miscellanies of these periodicals.** 


18 Geschichte der kirchlichen Trennung zwischen Orient und 
Occident (1864). 

19 Neue Studien ueber die Trennung der morgenlaendischen 
und abendlaendischen Kirche, Separatabdruck aus dem Chili- 
aneum, Bd. V (Wuerzburg; Stehel, 1864). Vide Chilianeum, Vol. 
III, p. 369; VI, p. 246; VII, p. 20. I have not been able to con- 
sult these volumes of the Chilianeum, a periodical which has long 
ceased to appear. The citations above are given according to 
STAMMINGER, I. ¢., p. 36. 

20 Vol. XII, p. 471 sq.; Vol. XIV, p. 140 sq. 

21 For some interesting particulars on the réle of Pichler in 
the movement called “ Reformkatholizimus” and on his tragic 
end see WEIss, Die religioese Gefahr (Herder, 1904), VI, 1; VII, 
18, 66. 


HERGENROETHER 303 


It would seem providential, therefore, that while 
such ideas were being ventilated in Germany, Her- 
genroether published his classical work, Photius, 
Patriarch of Constantinople, His Life, His Writ- 
ings, and the Greek Schism, in three volumes (1861- 
67), the fruit of twelve years of labor and re- 
search. It may be mentioned that, Hergenroether’s 
eyesight failing, he had instructed his sister Theresa 
in Greek to such an extent that she was able to 
read and write it, so that he had but to compare 
her copies with the originals. This work created a 
sensation not only in Germany, but also in Athens 
and St. Petersburg. If Hergenroether had never 
written anything but this great work on Photius, 
his name would live forever in the history of 
scholarship. The work may indeed be called a his- 
tory of the Byzantine Church from the fourth to 
the thirteenth century. No student of Byzantine 
Church history can even today, after a lapse of 
sixty years, approach his subject, without familiar- 
izing himself with this masterpiece. Speaking of 
Hergenroether’s Photius, Monsignor Kirsch says: 
“In this monumental work it is difficult to say 
whether the palm belongs to the author’s extensive 
knowledge of the manuscript material, to his pro- 
found erudition, or to his calm objective attitude.” ** 
And Krumbacher, an authority on Byzantine litera- 
ture and a non-Catholic, remarks: “ Solidity, great 

22 Photius, Patriarch von Constantinopel, Sein Leben, Seine 
Schriften, und das griechische Schisma, 3 Bde. (Regensburg, Manz, 


1867-1869). 
23 Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. 7, article Hergenroether. 


304 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


learning and objectivity are recognized merits of 
this work which seldom betrays the religious view- 
point of its author.” * 

Of the qualities of Photius noted by the two 
writers quoted, we have been most impressed by the 
objectivity, impartiality, and fairness of this great 
biography. Hergenroether set out to prove that not 
Rome, but Photius was the cause of the sad schism 
which rent the Church in two, and of all the unfor- 
tunate consequences which followed. He proved his 
case on overwhelming evidence. But this result of 
his research did not blind him to the greatness of the 
man whose life he was writing; it did not hinder him 
from paying homage to his marvelous knowledge, 
his great merits in theology, philosophy, history, 
philology, and science in general. In his Foreword to 
the first volume of Photius * he tells us of the prin- 
ciples which guided him in the preparation of his 
great work. He admits that his long occupation with 
his subject had evoked in him a certain affection 
for the famous patriarch, which inclined him rather 
to deal leniently with his faults than to exaggerate 
them, which kept him from an overseverity of judg- 
ment, wherever undeniable facts did not absolutely 
command an acknowledgment of his moral weak- 
nesses and crimes. “‘ The historian,’ he says, ‘“‘ will 
distribute praise and blame according to the un- 
compromising demands of truth and the commands 
of conscientious research. He will never cover up 


24 Geschichte der byzantinischen Literaturgeschichte, te 
Auflage, p. 78. 25 Vorwort, p. Vi. 


HERGENROETHER 305 


moral weaknesses out of sympathy for a man of 
eminent mind, nor will he permit himself, on ac- 
count of antipathy for these weaknesses to belittle 
or misjudge him. . . . There is one judgment for 
the man, another for the scholar.” The author, 
therefore, willingly grants Photius his merited 
place among scholars, but he denies to him the 
niche on the altar to which the Greek Orthodox 
Church has assigned him. It has been well said that 
only a man of genius and universality equal to that 
of Photius could have given us this biography. A 
fourth volume was later added, bearing the title: 
Monumenta graeca ad Photium etusque historiam 
pertinentia.”® 

We have considered the stand taken by Hergen- 
roether against political liberalism and its attacks 
on the Temporal Power of the Popes. In the mean- 
time the first stirrings of ecclesiastical liberalism 
became audible at the Congress of Catholic Schol- 
ars held at Munich in 1863. In his opening dis- 
course Doellinger, who had been the main promoter 
of the Congress, launched forth into a bitter at- 
tack on scholastic theology, past and present. In 
Doellinger and many others the sad change which 
was to end in apostacy had already made great 
progress. Hergenroether was under no illusions as 
to the great dangers which were soon to menace the 
Church. He was one of the eight men who con- 
sidered it their duty to lodge a protest on the 
floor of the Congress against some of the state- 


26 Regensburg, Manz, 1863. 


306 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


ments made by Doellinger in his discourse, and in 
several articles in the Chilianeum he took him 
severely to task for his contemptuous treatment of 
Italian theological literature.27 When, in 1864, the 
Syllabus called forth a veritable storm in the liberal 
camp, Hergenroether did his part to enlighten and 
quiet timid Catholics by his fine essay: The Errors 
of Modern Times Judged by the Holy See.* 

But all these were mere skirmishes. The real 
division of spirits and the main battle were caused 
by the opening of the Vatican Council (1869- 
1870), in the preparation of which Hergenroether 
had been active as a consultor since 1868. The 
Vatican Council led Hergenroether to the heights 
of his activity. The noble battle which he waged 
with all the weapons of his scholarship and with 
the whole strength of his love for the Church 
against the opponents of the Vatican Council and 
of its fundamental definitions on the relation of 
Faith and Science and the Infallibility of the Ro- 
man Pontiff forms the most beautiful page in the 
book of his life and gives him a high claim to the 
undying gratitude of posterity. Undoubtedly many 
others, indeed some of the best men in Germany, 
France, England, Belgium, Ireland, and Italy took 
a meritorious part in this great struggle; still one 
may Say, it seems to me, that Hergenroether stands 
forth among them all. He was “ The Great Ultra- 
montane,” in the good sense of the word. 


27 Vol. 3, pp. 28, 118; Vol. 4, pp. 114, 152. 
28 L.c., Vol..6, p. 192 sq. 


HERGENROETHER 307 


The controversies of that time, however, as is 
well known, dealt not merely with the Infallibility 
of the Pope, but had reference to a great number 
of dogmatical, historical, and canonistical questions. 
After having shown in two different experts’ opin- 
ions,’ which had been demanded by the Bavarian 
Government from the University of Wuerzburg, 
that the fears of that government with regard to 
the so-called New Vatican Dogmas were unfounded, 
Hergenroether now took up the defense of the 
Church against the attacks of Doellinger, Friedrich, 
Huber, von Schulte, and a number of others. 

The polemical treatises exchanged between Her- 
genroether and Doellinger prove, beyond a possi- 
bility of doubt, that in keenness of mind and thor- 
oughness of theological knowledge Hergenroether 
was not only the equal of Doellinger, but his supe- 
rior. Anyone who will take the time and trouble 
to make a comparative study of Doellinger’s Janus 
and Hergenroether’s Anti-Janus, will soon find how 
true this judgment is. In the autumn of 1869 Doel- 
linger together with Huber published a book en- 
titled The Pope and the Council by Janus,*° a sym- 
posium of all the objections that Doellinger could 
dig up in the past to discredit the Papacy and its 


29 Gutachten der theologischen Fakultaet der Julius Maxi- 
milians Universitaet Wuerzburg ueber fuenf ihr vorgelegte Fragen 
in Betreff des kuenftigen oekumenischen Konzils (Wuerzburg, 
Woerl, 1869).— Ueber das vatikanische Konzil. Entwurf einer 
Beantwortung der elf vom kgl. bayerischen Staatsministerium des 
Cultus den theologischen und juristischen Fakultaeten vorgelegten 
Fragen. (Mainz, Kirchheim, 1871). 

80 Janus, Der Papst und das Konzil (1869). 


308 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


claims. At the end of the same year Hergenroether 
opposed. to Doellinger’s Janus his Anti-Janus,”* a 
booklet of one hundred and eighty-eight pages, in 
which he subjects the whole tissue of ancient errors 
and modern sophisms of Janus to a searching his- 
torico-theological criticism. From a literary point of 
view it may be admitted that the Amti-Janus is not 
on a par with the larger works of Hergenroether 
which are remarkable for their lucidity and beauty 
of diction. The language is sometimes obscure, the 
style slovenly, but this may be explained by the fact, 
attested by Hergenroether himself,*’ that the book 
was hurriedly written, under the stress of many 
other labors. Abstracting from this, however, no 
candid reader of the Anti-Janus can fail to see how 
great an asset to Hergenroether was his thorough 
theological training at the Collegium Romanum, and 
how sadly Doellinger was handicapped by the lack 
of a firm grounding in Catholic principles. 

It would be impossible to enter into a discussion 
of the numerous smaller controversial brochures 
and articles in which Hergenroether illustrated the 
dogma of Papal Infallibility and defended it against 
its various opponents. It may suffice to mention 
here his Critique of Doellinger’s Declarations of 21 
January 1870** and of 28 March 1871,” his articles 

31 Anti-Janus, eine historisch-theologische Kritik der Schrift 
“ Der Papst und das Konzil” von JANUS (Herder, Freiburg, 1870). 

32 Anti-Janus, pp. 9-I0. 

33 Die Irrtuemer von mehr als 4oo Bischoefen und ihr theol- 
ogischer Censor (Freiburg, Herder, 1870). 


34 Kritik der v. Doellingerschen Erklaerung vom 28 Maerz, 
1870 (Freiburg, Herder, 1871). 


HERGENROETHER 300 


against the lay canonist von Schulte and against 
the Letters from the Council of the Allgemeine 
Zeitung of Munich. These letters were later on 
published in book form under the title Roman Let- 
ters from the Council.’ Their author was the no- 
torious Dr. Friedrich. In 1871 Hergenroether pub- 
lished the solid study The Infallible Magisterium 
of the Pope.*® It was Hergenroether’s intention to 
reply to the critics of his various brochures and 
especially of his Anti-Janus in an Anti-Janus Vin- 
dicatus, but he soon convinced himself that with a 
mere anti-critic nothing would be gained, that there 
was need of a larger, more comprehensive work. 
The accusations hurled in a babel of voices by Old 
Catholic theologians and canonists, by Protestants 
and infidels against the Catholic Church and the 
Papacy, as the enemies of the state and of civiliza- 
tion, needed a thorough refutation. Rarely have 
men of any age brought together such a mass of 
objections, of half-truths, falsehoods, malicious in- 
sinuations from all the centuries and from all cor- 
ners of the Christian world against the Papacy, and 
all this under the guise of science and the plea of 
Catholic sentiment, as Doellinger, von Schulte, and 
their adherents in the years immediately preceding 
and succeeding the Vatican Council. To this fortress 
of attack Hergenroether decided to oppose a fortress 

35 Roemische Briefe vom Konzil 1869-70 von QuvUIRINUS 
(Johann Friedrich), (Munich, 1870). Vide Hergenroether’s reply 
in Historisch-politische Blaetter, Vol. 65, pp. 707, 737, 865; Vol. 


66, Pp. 21, 132, 198, 421, 500, 557, 653. 
36 Das unfehlbare Lehramt des Papstes (Passau, 1871). 


310 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of defense, solidly founded on the bedrock of his- 
toric truth. This he did in his great work: Catholic 
Church and Christian State in Their Historical 
Development and in Their Relation to the Ques- 
tions of the Day. Historico-theological Essays 
(1872).°’ Hergenroether’s intentions in writing this 
work were completely fulfilled. The Janus literature 
will be forgotten, when this work will still be a 
rich source of information, an arsenal for the de- 
fense of truth against the attacks and prejudices of 
centuries, an arsenal for the historian and canonist, 
for the journalist and the parliamentarian in all 
questions pertaining to the relations between Church 
and State. 

One cannot peruse the controversial literature 
published by MHergenroether without being im- 
pressed by the objectivity, the calm, dispassionate, 
dignified tone which characterizes all this writing, 
although he suffered almost constant provocation. 
More than once, he himself assures us, as for in- 
stance in his controversy with Pichler, his patience 
was strained to the breaking-point, and he felt in- 
dignation welling up in his heart at the glaring bad 
faith and prevarications of his opponents.** But he 


37 Katholische Kirche und christlicher Staat in ihrer geschicht- 
lichen Entwickelung und in Beziehung auf die Fragen der Gegen- 
wart. Historisch-theologische Essays und zugleich ein Anti-Janus 
Vindicatus (Freiburg, Herder, 1872). Literaturbelege und Nacht- 
raege (ib. 1876). The work was translated into Italian (3 vols. 
Parma, 1877-1878). An English translation was published in Lon- 
don under the title Catholic Church and Christian State in 1876 
(Burns and Oates); another in Baltimore in 1880. 

88 Archiv fuer katholisches Kirchenrecht (1865), Vol. 14, p. 


142 sq. 


HERGENROETHER 311 


mastered himself; he refused to employ the poison- 
ous weapons of abuse and to indulge in personali- 
ties. The Anti-infallibilist pamphleteers, on the con- 
trary, were remarkable for their vindictiveness, for 
the scorn, abuse, and insults which they heaped 
upon the defenders of the Holy See. The tone which 
characterizes most of their writings might be com- 
pared to that prevalent on the fishmarket in Paris. 
Even some Catholic writers, for instance Louis 
Veuillot in France and one or the other clerical and 
lay theologian in England did not always withstand 
the temptation of helping along the good cause by 
abusing their opponents. In the Introduction to his 
Catholic Church and Christian State *® Hergenroe- 
ther complains of the insults showered upon him, 
of the insinuations against his intellectual integrity, 
of the dishonest methods of controversy of those 
who attacked him, of the numerous abusive, yes, 
threatening letters which he was receiving daily, 
and asks: ‘‘ When have I ever in one single line 
permitted myself to indulge in similar invectives? ” 
No one acquainted with his books will fail to give 
an immediate verdict in his favor. Noble in po- 
lemics, he was moderate and just in his judgments. 
And if he was compelled to pass a severe verdict 
on some person or institution, he was not satisfied 
with one reason, he looked for ten. For his great 
opponent Doellinger he always had the greatest 

39 Katholische Kirche und christlicher Staat, Einleitung, p. 
III sq. Hergenroether admits, however, that Doellinger, Friedrich, 


and Huber generally kept within the limits of those decencies 
which one has a right to demand in controversy. 


312 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


veneration, even after his apostacy, and he fre- 
quently spoke of his deep grief at being compelled 
by his love for the Church and for truth to use his 
pen against his old teacher. As late as in his Intro- 
duction to his Manual of Universal Church His- 
tory he says of Doellinger, “Ubi bene, nemo 
melius.” 

Hergenroether’s Catholic Church and Christian 
State closes what one might call the polemical 
period of his literary activities. He had not sought 
all this strife and controversy; he had been forced 
into it by his realization of the dangers confronting 
the Church and by his love for his faith. The years 
that follow are years of calm and peaceful labor. 
The first work of importance in this second period 
of Hergenroether’s literary life is his Manual of 
Universal Church History*® in three volumes 
(1876-1880). It is a synthesis of all of Hergen- 
roether’s preceding studies, and makes a strong 
appeal to the reader by the lucidity with which the 
vast material is disposed and by its nobility of dic- 
tion. The author was prevailed upon to compose 
this Manual by the repeated pleas of his friends 
and students. It permits one, more than any other 
of his works, to cast a glance into his workshop. 
One is at a loss what to admire most, the vast 
amount of literature, upon which the work is 
founded, or the complete mastery which the author 
displays in handling his material. Whosoever is 


40 Handbuch der allgemeinen Kirchengeschichte, 3 Bde., 1876- 
1880; sixth revised edition by J. P. KirscH in 4 volumes (Frei- 
burg, Herder, 1925). 


HERGENROETHER a2 


called upon to pursue studies of detail and to use 
Hergenroether’s scientific apparatus, as found in 
the footnotes, will be inclined to rank the work 
very highly. 

For years one of Hergenroether’s favorite plans 
had been to write a comprehensive history of the 
Catholic Church in the eighteenth century. This 
plan was never to see fruition; but among the 
essays preparatory for this work may be men- 
tioned his sketch of Cardinal Maury* and his 
studies on Piedmoni’s Negotiations with the Holy 
See in the Eighteenth Century* and on Spain’s 
Negotiations with the Papal See.** The main reason 
why the large work was never written is to be found 
in the fact that in 1877 he was prevailed upon by 
his friend Benjamin Herder to take charge of the 
second edition of the Katholisches Kirchenlexikon.** 
Hergenroether at the head of an undertaking of 
that kind was a pledge of success. With great in- 
dustry he mastered the preliminary labors, always 
of great importance, assigned the articles to the 
various authors and completed the first installments 
of the work, so that, when he was called to Rome, 
his successor, Franz Kaulen, whom he himself had 


41 Katholische Studien, vol. IV, n. 3 and 4, Wuerzburg, 1878. 

42 LT. c., Vol. II, n. 3, ib. 1876. The Katholische Studien have 
not been accessible to the writer. 

43 Archiv fuer kath. Kirchenrecht, Vol. 10, pp. 1, 185; Vol. 
II, pp. 252, 367; Vol. 12, pp. 46, 385; Vol. 13, pp. 91, 393; Vol. 
TA eD2 tre Vols, pi 169. 

44 Wetzer und Welte’s Kirchenlexikon oder Encyclopaedie der 
katholischen Theologie und ihrer Huelfswissenschaften, Zweite 
Auflage begonnen von JosEPH CARDINAL HERGENROETHER, fortge- 
setzt von Franz KauLen (Freiburg, Herder, 1880 ff.). 


314 CHURCH “ERISTORIANS 


chosen, found the main difficulties removed and a 
smooth path before him. 

As early as May 18, 1877, Pius IX had made 
Hergenroether a member of his household. But 
greater honors were in store for him. On the 12th 
of May, 1879, Leo XIII, in the same consistory 
with Monsignor Pie of Poitiers, Joseph Pecci, John 
Henry Newman, and Thomas Zigliara, elevated 
him to the Cardinalate. Stamminger is right when 
he numbers Hergenroether among the learned Car- 
dinals, and when he says that the continuator of 
Eco’s Purpura Docta will necessarily assign Her- 
genroether, if for no other reason than for his ac- 
complishments as a Cardinal, a place side by side 
with such men as Pallavicini, Baronius, Angelo 
Mai, and others.*® At Rome a number of difficult 
duties devolved upon Hergenroether. He was a 
member of four Congregations and Protector of 
several religious communities. But although these 
offices absorbed a great deal of his time, they were 
after all only secondary. It was as Prefect of the 
Vatican Archives that he has rendered services to 
science which cannot be overestimated. 

It is well known that the Papal Archives at that 
time were not in the best of order, and men whom 
one will not accuse of animosity against the Apos- 
tolic See had complained bitterly of this state of 
affairs. Thus the Protestant Boehmer writes during 
the Pontificate of Pius IX: “If some one would 
only call the attention of the Holy Father to the 


OPO LCs eae 


HERGENROETHER 315 


fact that everything needs to be improved here, 
and that a man must be placed at the head who is 
qualified by knowledge and character to represent 
Rome before the forum of European scholarship, 
and who has the ability and the will to serve science 
without selfishness. Would to God that the next 
Pope, preannounced by the prophet, as ‘lumen de 
coelis’ will see in the truthloving science of his- 
tory the light from heaven in the darkness and 
errors of this age, so devoid of all principles.” In 
Leo XIII the right Pope had appeared for this work 
and in Hergenroether a scholar qualified for this 
task had been found. It is hardly doubtful, that if 
Boehmer had lived till 1879, and if his advice had 
been sought, he himself would have suggested Her- 
genroether or his own scholar Janssen for the 
position.*® 

Convinced of the truth of the adage that the best 
justification of the Papacy is its history, Leo XIII 
determined to make the treasures of the Vatican 
Archives accessible to the scholars of all lands. In 
order to realize this plan most effectively, he ap- 
pointed Hergenroether, on the 1oth of June, 1870, 
Prefect of the Apostolic Archives. In a memorable 
brief (August 18, 1883), directed to Cardinals 
De Luca, Pitra, and Hergenroether, Leo correctly 
characterized the anti-Christian historiography of 
our times as “a conspiracy of men against truth,” 
proclaimed as the supreme law of history, “ne 
quid falsi dicat, ne quid veri taceat,” and opened 


46 Hist.-politische Blaetter, Vol. 106 (1890), p. 725. 


316 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


up, for this very purpose of truth, the Papal col- 
lections to the scrutiny of the world.*’ Leo’s letter 
found in Hergenroether a most intelligent inter- 
preter and a most conscientious executor. 

Restlessly he devoted himself to this honorable 
task, notably assisted by Father Denifle, O. P., and 
Father Franz Ehrle, S. J., now Cardinal Ehrle. 
The first fruits from this new field were garnered 
by Hergenroether himself. Faithful to a promise, 
made by him years before to his dearest friend, the 
venerable Hefele, to continue his History of the 
Councils,** he made an extensive use of the rich 
treasures of the Vatican Archives in the composi- 
tion of the eighth and ninth volumes of that monu- 
mental work. Both these volumes are characterized 
by Hergenroether’s usual carefulness of research, 
by vividness and beauty of language. Unfortunately, 
ill health and his manifold other duties hindered 
him from completing the work.*° 

But he also was one of the first to edit and make 
accessible to scholars the manuscript treasures of 
the Vatican. His Regesta of the Pontificate of 
Leo X,°° which place that Pope in a more favorable 

47 Leonis Pp. XIII Epistolae ad S. R. E. Cardinales Ant. de 
Luca vice-cancellarium S. R. E., Jo. Bapt. Pitra bibliothecarium 
S. R. E., Joseph Hergenroether tabulariis Vaticanis praefectum. 
For the text of the letter see Archiv fuer kath. Kirchenrecht, 
Vol. 50, p. 428 sqq. 

48 Conciliengeschichte. Nach den Quellen bearbeitet von Kart 
JosEpH von HEeEFeE Le, fortgesetzt von Jos—EPpH CARDINAL HERGEN- 
ROETHER. Bd. VIII und IX (Freiburg, Herder, 1887-1890). 

49 See his Introduction to the eighth volume for the difficulties 
with which he had to contend. 


50 Leonis X P. M. Regesta. Fasc. I-VIII (Friburgi, Herder 
1884-1891). 


HERGENROETHER 317 


light than that in which he had hitherto appeared, 
were edited by him conjointly with his brother, Mon- 
signor Franz Hergenroether, and take us to the 
year 1515. Of equal value were the care and labor 
which he gave to the interior arrangement and to 
the administration of the Archives, thus putting 
them into such a condition that they could be used 
by others. The merits of Hergenroether as admin- 
istrator and organizer of the Vatican Archives are 
so well known the world over, that no scholar will 
apply the sickle to this immense harvest without 
remembering the great Cardinal. ° 

In the midst of all these duties the Cardinal was 
ever ready to give his precious time not only to the 
many scholars and persons of prominence who 
called upon him, but also to the lowliest, and to 
help financially wherever there was need. But for 
all that, his means were very limited. At Wuerz- 
burg the income from his professorship and from 
his writings had given him a comfortable living; 
at Rome, where he had to live in conformity with 
his station, he was a poor Cardinal and often sorely 
worried by financial cares. He was wont to refer 
jokingly to the fact that from a highly salaried 
professor he had become a poor Cardinal.** 

Nobody realized how grievously Hergenroether 
suffered in body during those last years which he 
spent at Rome as Cardinal and Prefect of the Papal 
Archives. His eyesight grew weaker, and he was 
frequently tortured by severe attacks of nervous- 


51 Katholik (1890), II, p. 494. 


318 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


ness. A number of paralytic strokes, the first of 
which he suffered on the 24th of February, 1882, 
as he was about to go to the Vatican to assist at 
the Lenten sermon, crippled him so seriously that 
from now on he was forced to drag himself along 
wearily on his cane. But although his body was 
broken, his mind was as alert as ever. What wor- 
ried him now was not so much the loss of his health, 
as rather the fact that his hand could no longer 
follow his thought with accustomed alacrity. He 
grieved also, because at frequent intervals he had to 
forego the sacred privilege of saying Mass, or at 
least of saying it publicly. He died on the 3d 
day of October, 1890, at the Cistercian Abbey of 
Mehrerau, while on his way to Rome from his be- 
loved Wuerzburg, whither he had gone in order to 
pray at the grave of his brother Philipp, the former 
professor of canon law at Eichstaett. In the crypt 
of Mehrerau the great Cardinal now rests from his 
many labors. In 1897 a monument was erected to 
his memory. His best monument is undoubtedly 
his works. But it is to be hoped that some day 
Catholic Germany, which has given us so many ex- 
cellent biographies of the great men of the Revival 
and the Kulturkampf, will present us with a com- 
prehensive life of Joseph Hergenroether. Doellinger 
also died in 1890. Doellinger and Hergenroether! 
In the death of the one the Church deplores the 
lost son, who in his old days heaped insult upon 
insult upon her, who seemed to have forgotten all 
the love which he once bore her; in the other she 


HERGENROETHER 319 


grieves over one of the noblest, most courageous, and 
ablest defenders she ever possessed, a son whose 
love for the Church grew as the years passed,°”? a 
man who always remained faithful to his watch- 
word: “Alles fuer die Wahrheit, nichts gegen die 
Wahrheit, alles fuer die Kirche Gottes und mit 
rie) eee 53 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


STAMMINGER, Zum Gedaechtnisse Cardinal Hergenroe- 
thers (Herder, 1892). 

HEINRICH, in the Katholik (1890-92). 

HoLuweECck, in the Historische-politische Blaetter (1890). 

STEINER, Der Episcopat der Gegenwart in Lebensbildern 
dargesstellt (Wuerzburg, 1883). 

Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. VII, article, Hergenroether 
by Monsignor Kirsch. 

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, Vol. 50, pp. 228-231, 
article by F. Lauchert. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON HERGENROETHER 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


Kuirchenlexikon, Vol. VII. Introduction by Streber. 
Zosu, Trauerrede beim Leichenbegaengnisse seiner Emi- 
nenz des Cardinals Hergenroether (¥Feldkirch, 1890). 
NrrscHL, Gedachtnissede (Wuerzburg, 1897). 
The more important works of Cardinal Hergenroether 
will be found touched upon in the article of Mon- 
52 Hist.-politische Blaetter, l. c., p. 7209. 
53 Katholische Kirche und christlicher Staat. Einleitung, p. 


xxix. ‘‘ Everything for the truth, nothing against the truth, every- 
thing for the Church of God and with her.” 


320 


CHURCH HISTORIANS 


signor Kirsch in the Catholic Encyclopedia. Many of 
his interesting and valuable contributions to theo- 
logical and controversial literature are scattered in 
German Catholic Zeitschriften, too numerous to 
list here. 


JOHANNES JANSSEN (1829-1891) 


Rev. ALFRED KAUFMANN, S.J. 
Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska 


FTER the Congress of Vienna, 1815, Europe 
settled down to enjoy a prolonged respite 
from international wars. The horrors of 

the revolutionary period made thinking minds once 
again realize the fundamental importance of the 
Christian traditions of Europe and enkindled every- 
where a remarkable revival of religious faith and 
practice. In France an Ozanam, a Montalembert 
and Lacordaire and many others proved that not 
all Frenchmen of the day were “Sons of Voltaire,” 
but that the ‘Sons of the Crusaders” meant to 
dispute every inch of ground with advancing ra- 
tionalism and licentiousness. English Catholics were 
cheered by the glorious fruits of the Oxford move- 
ment, while in Germany the thirties witnessed the 
beginning of that wide-spread renewal of faith and 
fervor that were to furnish the troops for the great 
Catholic leaders in the Kulturkampf. This general 
revival extended also to the field of Catholic schol- 
arship. While the revolutionary and Napoleonic 
periods are singularly sterile in this respect, the 
first half of the nineteenth century contains a num- 
ber of names that fill every Catholic heart with 
pardonable pride. These names prove that where 


321 


322 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


Catholic faith and practice flourish, one of its finest 
flowers, Catholic scholarship, will not be sought in 
vain. 

Johannes Janssen, the subject of this sketch, was 
born into this Second Spring. He lived in the midst 
of it, inhaled its fragrance, was inspired by its most 
distinguished representatives. In his own country, 
and during his childhood and early manhood, Moeh- 
ler, Doellinger, Hefele, Hergenroether, Ritter, and 
others carried aloft the torch of Catholic learning 
and even extorted a hearing from their unwilling 
opponents. 

Janssen was born April 10, 1829, in the quaint 
old town of Xanten on the lower Rhine. The genius 
loci was decidedly of a historical turn of mind. 
Xanten, the site of a Roman camp, the birth-camp 
of Siegfried of the Nibelungen, the Troja of the 
medieval legend, the proud possessor of the church 
of St. Victor, one of the finest specimens of medi- 
eval architecture on the Rhine, was eminently 
qualified to contain the cradle of one of Germany’s 
greatest historians. Janssen’s parents were simple 
God-fearing people, blessed, not with wealth, but 
with a modicum of this world’s goods, the result 
of unwearied labor and strict economy. Father 
Janssen had seen the “ Franzosenzeit,” with its 
lawless liberty and license. Under his eyes the 
armies of Napoleon had crossed and recrossed the 
Rhine on their marches to and from their eastern 
campaigns. His heart had thrilled to the martial 
songs of the War of Liberation, and down to his 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 323 


old age he loved to tell of those stirring times. John 
often avowed that these early impressions awakened 
in his boyish heart the interest and love for the 
past. Whatever historical books he could lay hands 
on he eagerly devoured. Mother Janssen was the 
ideal German Hausfrau. Always active, sincerely 
and unostentatiously pious, she carefully instilled 
into the heart of her John that simple faith and 
devotion, together with habits of unremitting la- 
bor, that remained his outstanding characteristics 
throughout life. Indeed, the best qualities of father 
and mother were so harmoniously blended in the 
son that they gave to his nature an irresistible 
charm that won hearts wherever he went. 

If it is true that the poet is born, the study of 
the childhood and boyhood of many an eminent 
man seems to show that the axiom holds in the 
case of intellectual and artistic excellence ‘in gen- 
eral. With young Janssen the historical bent of 
mind revealed itself unmistakably. He loved to tell 
the story how he once aroused the impatience of 
his gentle mother when on the return from a pil- 
grimage to the far-famed Kevelaer he regaled their 
fellow passengers with stories from Annegarn’s 
Weltgeschichte which a kind aunt had bought for 
him, instead of joining in the devotions of the pil- 
grims. When leaving the elementary school his stu- 
dious habits were so pronounced that relatives and 
friends interceded with his father to permit John 
to continue his studies. For a long time Father 
Janssen hesitated. Instead, he gave his son as an 


324 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


apprentice to his brother-in-law, who was a copper- 
smith. Young Janssen tried to do his best, but the 
historical complex proved too strong. Again and 
again he was caught with books under the smith’s 
apron, and—what was worse —by his continual 
narration of stories he interfered with the progress 
of his fellow apprentices. In the end his employer, 
with whom the future historian maintained a life- 
long friendship, became his staunchest advocate 
with Father Janssen. John was released from the 
smithy and threw himself on his books with the 
eagerness of a prisoner freed from long captivity. 
It is doubtful if Janssen, even if his inclinations had 
been otherwise, could have succeeded in a trade. 
His health was never robust. His delicate frame, his 
want of physical vigor, his passion for books, mani- 
festly predestined him for a profession. 

In the autumn of 1846 he left his home to com- 
plete his college course at a Gymnasium. Being a 
conscientious student, he neglected none of the 
courses taught; yet he found it possible to devote a 
considerable part of his time to historical reading. 
To his chagrin, instruction in history was not in 
competent hands, and — what was worse —it was 
permeated with the ideas of the ‘ enlightenment ” 
of Josephism. In this atmosphere the Catholic 
Middle Ages received little consideration and still 
less appreciation. To compensate himself for the 
loss, Janssen, during vacation, guided by the monu- 
ments of his native town, delved into the medieval 
period of his Rhineland, and in imagination recon- 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 325 


structed the splendors of the communal and social 
life of those times. His Catholic instinct and sound 
historical sense prevented him from accepting the 
contemptuous views of his teachers. He once con- 
fided to a fellow student: ‘‘ Wait till we are in a 
position to do independent research. Then we shall 
see if the age that built the cathedrals of Cologne 
and Xanten has been as dark as our professors 
paint it.” 

In the meantime he had resolved to prepare him- 
self for the priesthood, and in the fall of 1840 set 
out for the theological school at Munster, West- 
phalia. Soon he earned the reputation of being the 
most industrious student of his class. But history 
was not forgotten. Besides the courses prescribed by 
the theological curriculum, he attended lectures on 
various phases of history. But his health proved 
unequal to the strain. In his very first semester he 
was frequently confined to the sickroom. This, and 
a conscientiousness sometimes bordering on scrupu- 
losity, made him give up the thought of adopting 
the life of a pastor of souls. In 1850 he left Mun- 
ster and decided to go to the University of Louvain. 
What attracted him to that venerable seat of learn- 
ing was, besides the wish of perfecting himself in 
French and English, the thoroughly Catholic atmos- 
phere of the University. He was not disappointed. 
From the outset he felt at home. The spirit per- 
meating everything in and out of the lecture halls 
reminded him of the happy times he had spent in 
the bosom of his family. He is enthusiastic over 


326 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the country and its people, ‘‘ the land where there 
is not schism and error, where one does not mock 
and ridicule the religious convictions and feelings 
of the other, where young and old, rich and poor, 
are animated by the same religious spirit” (Letter 
to his parents). Often the thought of the religious 
divisions of his own country, — divisions which 
later were to become the chief subject of his re- 
search, — weighed heavily on his mind. During va- 
cation he visited the quaint old towns of Belgium 
and studied the artistic monuments of the past. 

It was at Louvain, too, that he definitely made 
up his mind to devote his life to historical research. 
He had the good fortune of coming under the influ- 
ence of three excellent professors. The historian, 
John Moeller, interested him in medieval studies, 
while Freije directed his attention to the Reforma- 
tion, and especially to that phase of it which was 
enacted in the Netherlands. P. Gachard had just 
begun the voluminous publication of the sources 
which made such studies fruitful. Janssen conceived 
the profoundest admiration for Laforét, the philos- 
opher and historian, who later was to be one of the 
most distinguished presidents of the University. 
Besides pursuing his historical studies Janssen made 
use of the cosmopolitan character of the University, 
and perfected his knowledge of French, English, 
and Italian. 

In the summer of 1851 we find our historian back 
in his beloved Rhineland and matriculated at the 
University of Bonn, where he intended to win his 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 327 


doctorate. There again he found excellent guides 
in his chosen field. Aschbach, the acknowledged 
authority on early German history, was his prin- 
cipal mentor. Dahlmann, the noble unselfish patriot 
and renowned author of the monumental “ Quellen- 
kunde zur deutschen Geschichte,’ won Janssen’s 
gratitude for the readiness with which he put his 
time and knowledge at the disposal of his students. 
Julius Ficker, who later was to win fame by his re- 
searches into Italy’s legal and imperial history, was 
Janssen’s fellow student, and was bound to him by 
the ties of intimate friendship. The preoccupation 
of his teachers and friends with medieval history 
induced Janssen to select the subject of his thesis 
from that field. He presented for his doctorate a 
study of Wibald of Stablo and Corvey, an outstand- 
ing figure of the twelfth century, equally distin- 
guished as churchman, head of a large monastic 
family, confidante and adviser of three emperors, 
and eminent scholar. The work found a very friendly 
reception among Catholic and Protestant scholars 
alike, and aroused the fondest hopes of even greater 
things. The Prussian Department of Education was 
so favorably impressed that it offered to our young 
doctor, whose means were then very limited, a purse 
which enabled him to spend several months in the 
libraries and lecture halls of the capital. As usual, 
his talents and charming manner won him many 
and valuable friends, among them Wattenbach, the 
great paleographer, and Ritter, the founder of mod- 
ern comparative geography. 


328 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


In August, 1854, Janssen returned to Munster 
where the position of assistant professor of history 
at the Akademie was offered to him. In the ordinary 
course of events this would have been the first step 
towards a regular professorship and a brilliant uni- 
versity career. But Providence decreed otherwise. 
His inaugural lecture at Munster proved to be the 
last he delivered there. From Frankfurt, the city of 
the coronation of the Holy Roman Emperors, and 
then still the seat of the Diet of the German Con- 
federation, came the offer of a professorship in his- 
tory for the Catholic students at the non-Catholic 
Gymnasium. The prospect of having a position se- 
cure for life and, above all, of being near the great 
Boehmer, with whom he was already in correspond- 
ence, induced Janssen to decide quickly. He entered 
upon his new duties in October, 1854, and for the 
rest of his life the man who soon was to be a star 
of the first magnitude in the historical firmament 
remained a teacher of undergraduates, rejecting 
many a tempting offer of a more distinguished 
career. 

In the old imperial city on the Main Janssen soon 
became a member of a circle of highly cultured men 
and women. Daily intercourse with these high- 
minded and intensely interested people was to fruc- 
tify his genius and energize his faculties to bring 
forth their ripest fruit. Among these Frankfurt 
friends John Frederic Boehmer easily holds the 
first place. He was Janssen’s senior by more than 
thirty years, and had won his laurels by his massive 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 329 


publications of sources of medieval imperial history, 
especially of his Regesta Imperit. Yet the two men 
soon became so much one heart and one soul that 
one seemed to be indispensable to the other. ‘I 
lived in Boehmer,” Janssen wrote after the death 
of his friend, ‘‘ and his departure means for me the 
conclusion of one period of my life.” In almost daily 
intercourse the master imbued the pupil with the 
principles of sound historical research, and, Prot- 
estant though he was, he insisted that the Christian 
and Catholic viewpoint is the only one that sheds 
light on much historical detail and gives it shape 
and meaning. Janssen loved to quote the following 
golden axioms on the task of the historian: ‘‘ If the 
efforts of the historian must, above all, be directed 
towards the acquisition and understanding of truth, 
they must proceed from the sources. These sources 
must be critically sifted, arranged, and put in ready 
form. Then we must visualize them clearly and 
vividly, without being diverted by unessential de- 
tail. One’s gaze should remain fixed on the total 
and the essential, and one should proceed in one’s 
work with a judgment of men and things which has 
not been warped by the narrow ideas and party 
spirit of the present time.” Such words were care- 
fully treasured by the younger man. But Boehmer, 
too, was full of praise for his friend “‘ for his eager- 
ness to learn, his zeal and conscientiousness that 
mark the true scholar, combined with so much mod- 
esty and simplicity of heart as are seldom found 
in a young man.” Janssen in turn writes to a friend: 


330 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


‘‘T have every reason to be contented in my present 
surroundings. . . . I wish you could have a chance 
to be with Boehmer just for a few days. A real man, 
every inch of him, so instructive and inspiring that 
I have not found his equal during my years at the 
University.” 

Unfortunately during the first years at Frankfurt 
Janssen’s weak health frequently checked his ardor 
and at times showed such alarming symptoms that 
his devoted friends feared for his life. Despite such 
obstacles he kept at his work. Under Boehmer’s 
guidance he devoted the first part of his residence 
at Frankfurt to the period covered by his friend’s 
Regesta, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but 
after 1857 his principal interest drifted toward the 
later Middle Ages and the beginnings of modern 
history. 

His first undertaking was inspired by the duty 
of friendship. Henry C. Scholten had begun a two- 
volume life of Louis the Saint, but death prevented 
him from finishing the task. Janssen then took over 
the work, and in 1855 completed it with the pub- 
lication of the second volume. In the same year two 
series of valuable articles appeared under his name. 
One, treating certain phases of the Rebellion of the 
Netherlands, was the fruit of his Louvain studies; 
the other discussed the sources for the history of 
Cologne in the Middle Ages. The following year he 
appeared with a volume of critical editions of the 
Chronicles of the Munsterland. It formed the third 
of a series undertaken by his friends, Ficker and 


JOHANNES JANSSEN gat 


Cornelius. For the next four years nothing of im- 
portance appeared from his pen. His health was 
feebler than ever, and he found himself more than 
once on the brink of the grave. Still he used every 
ounce of strength to collect materials for his great 
History of the German People, on which he had 
set his heart. During the same period he prepared 
another important contribution to historical science. 
Boehmer had called his attention to the rich mate- 
rials for the history of the later Middle Ages that 
lay hidden in the Frankfurt archives. Other de- 
positories were laid under contribution, and thus he 
was able to publish, in 1863, the first part of his 
Frankfurt Imperial Correspondence, from 1376 to 
1519. Three years later the second volume appeared, 
and only in 1872 the last one. Experts in the field 
spoke of the “colossal industry” to which these 
tomes bear witness. They are simply indispensable 
to the student of this period. But these labors did 
not absorb all the energies of the author. The year 
1861 saw the publication of a little work on France’s 
Rhine policy. Three years later he produced his 
Schiller as Historian. The great poet had written a 
history of the Rebellion of the Netherlands against 
Philip II, and one of the Thirty Years’ War. His 
splendid prose had secured him a place among often- 
quoted historians. Janssen’s critical inquiry does not 
pass judgment on these works of the poet on the 
strength of later documentary evidence, but proves 
that Schiller misjudged events with the evidence 
then on hand. His handling of facts furnishes abund- 


332 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


ant proof of how literally Schiller carried out his own 
principle: ‘‘ History is the storehouse for my fancy. 
The facts have to put up with what shape they re- 
ceive under my hands.” 

Janssen’s letters of these first years at Frankfurt 
breathe contentment and happiness. His position as 
teacher provided him with a modest but secure in- 
come. The few hours devoted to instruction left him 
ample time for research. Near at hand he had ex- 
cellent historical libraries and one of the richest 
archival repositories of Germany. A circle of warm 
friends had formed around him, and proved a never- 
failing source of encouragement and interest. Boeh- 
mer gave him the advice of a ripe scholar interested 
in the same field, and bestowed upon him the affec- 
tion of a father. And yet he was not wholly satis- 
fied. From childhood on, the altar had been his 
goal. It was merely on account of weak health that 
he had suspended the execution of his design when, 
in 1850, he left the seminary of Munster. A very 
profound realization of the responsibilities of a pas- 
tor of souls made him hesitate for a long time before 
he took the decisive step. In Munster as well as in 
Louvain he had attended courses in theology. All 
who knew him during his early years at Frankfurt 
agree that as a layman he led a singularly devout 
life, a life of prayer and of work sanctified by the 
purest intention. That historical studies alone would 
never satisfy the longings of his Catholic soul be- 
came increasingly evident to him in his daily inter- 
course with Boehmer. That eminent scholar stood 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 333 


at the end of a career of unselfish devotion to truth. 
He was sincerely religious, had long since severed 
all connections with the Protestant communion, and 
in his studies had become imbued with an admira- 
tion and love for things Catholic. But he was so 
engrossed in his work that he never found time 
seriously to consider the question of his own alle- 
giance to the Church. Yet Janssen knew that he 
was not happy. “‘ For a long time,” he later on said 
to his biographer, Pastor, ‘‘ I knew Boehmer’s spir- 
itual condition, the void in his soul, his mental anx- 
ieties that sometimes bordered on despair. Yes, my 
friend, the sight of the interior unhappiness of one 
of the most gifted minds of our century more than 
anything else drove me into the clerical state.” In 
1859 Janssen temporarily retired from Frankfurt 
and completed his theological studies at Tuebingen. 
Then he prepared for the final step under the guid- 
ance of the saintly Capuchin, Father Borgia. In 
March, 1860, he received Holy Orders from the 
bishop of Limburg. All who knew him personally 
testify that Janssen was the model of a good priest. 
Those who saw him at the altar felt as though they 
were in the presence of a Saint. From the daily 
Sacrifice he gathered strength courageously to per- 
severe in his arduous labors. From now on he looked 
upon his work as a real apostolate entrusted to him 
by his Divine Master. Not only did he pursue his 
studies with renewed fervor, but despite the de- 
mands made upon his time he interested himself in 
all Catholic endeavors. Thus we find him address- 


334 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


ing one of the great annual meetings of the German 
Catholics. For a time he even accepted from the 
Center party a mandate in the Prussian house of 
representatives. A journey to Rome in 1863 and an 
audience with the Holy Father, Pius IX, filled his 
priestly heart with enthusiastic loyalty to the Holy 
See. He was gladdened, too, by the appreciation 
which his labors found with the highest authority in 
the Church. 

Shortly before this journey his beloved Boehmer 
passed away. In three stately volumes Janssen 
erected an enduring monument to his master, 1868. 
As this meant the reading and sifting of a vast 
amount of correspondence and other papers the 
labor involved was enormous. But it obtained for 
its author, almost at once, a place among the best 
biographers of the country. Catholic and non- 
Catholic critics were unanimous in their praise. 
Ranke thought the work important enough to give 
it an honorable mention in his presidential address 
to the National Historical Association. Somewhat 
later Janssen wrote for a larger circle of readers a 
one-volume life of his hero, which to the present 
time is recognized as the model of a popular biog- 
raphy. His talent for biography was equally evident 
in another popular work which he published some- 
what later. His friend, August Reichensperger, one 
of the leaders of the Center during the Kultur- 
kampf, had often urged him to publish in book 
form various character sketches which Janssen at 
different times had written for periodicals. The 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 335 


author finally consented. But nearly all of them — 
twelve in number —were rewritten and enlarged. 
The work appeared in 1875. Its success was imme- 
diate and lasting, as Reichensperger had predicted. 
The critics admired the masterly characterization, 
the plastic individuality of the different portraits, 
the graceful diction, and the phenomenal many- 
sided information of the author. Representatives 
of the most divergent schools of thought in art, 
politics, and religion are introduced to the reader, 
almost all of them depicting themselves in words 
taken from their own published and unpublished 
writings. The book was, however, only a by-product 
from the author’s literary workshop. Janssen had in 
the meantime seriously taken in hand the execution 
of the work which had been planned for many years, 
and which alone would suffice to secure him a place 
among the foremost Catholic historians. 

In 1853 Janssen, then a student at the univer- 
sity of Bonn, met for the first time his future inti- 
mate friend, Frederic Boehmer. The veteran his- 
torian loved to discuss literary plans with his 
younger friends. One of his favorite maxims was 
that in historical studies the beginner should at once 
set himself a great goal, worthy of his best efforts. 
In particular, the broad-minded scholar regretted 
the fact that Catholics left the field of history too 
much to others, especially those periods during 
which the influence of the Church was so predomi- 
nant and far-reaching that it cannot be ignored. 
Boehmer, though an outsider, had caught a glimpse 


336 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of the grandeur and dignity and charity of that 
Church. ‘‘ We live on her inheritance,” he said to 
his young friend. ‘‘ Would that in our day, as of 
old, she again exercised that ennobling dominion 
over the hearts and minds of Europe! ” What was 
needed was, in Boehmer’s opinion, Catholic scholars 
in the field of history who would combine thorough- 
ness of research with good judgment and a mas- 
tery of form. “Catholics should give us the true 
picture of our people. Others have given us a dis- 
torted picture.” Such words from the lips of the 
venerable medievalist enkindled a fire of enthusiasm 
in the heart of the young student, and he resolved 
then and there to become the historian of his people. 
But more than twenty years were to elapse after 
that memorable interview before Janssen’s plans 
reached fruition. 

In 1870 Janssen wrote to his friend and publisher, 
Benjamin Herder: “ Since 1853, when at the age of 
twenty-five I conceived the plan of a German his- 
tory, I have collected material and made prepara- 
tions more extensive than I myself realized before 
I began to revise and rearrange my notes. If God 
gives me health and strength you will be delighted 
with the work. It will not be without practical 
fruit.” But the more he delved into the mass of 
primary sources and special monographs, the more 
he understood the necessity of limiting the field of 
investigation. Boehmer had long before spoken of 
this, and had advised the elimination of social and 
cultural history. It cost Janssen a considerable 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 337 


mental struggle before he could come to any de- 
cision in this matter of concentration on one aspect 
of his favorite subject. He was a typical son of the 
Rhineland, being endowed by nature with the pro- 
verbial lightness of heart and mental elasticity, with 
the vivacity and many-sided interest of his country- 
men. Boehmer’s advice to eleminate the cultural 
features did not appeal to him. Man’s endeavors 
and man’s vicissitudes in every-day life had always 
interested him intensely. In the end he departed 
from his original idea of a complete German history, 
and confined himself to the period of the close of 
the Middle Ages and the beginnings of modern 
times. The spirit in which he deliberated is appar- 
ent from the following remarks in one of his letters: 
““On September 8, 1857, as I returned from St. 
Leonard’s Church, I made up my mind to begin the 
History with the close of the Middle Ages. That 
day I formed my plans under the patronage of the 
Blessed Mother of God, whose help and intercession 
I had invoked.” 

While composing his History Janssen frequently 
solicited and obtained advice and information from 
his many friends. It was partly due to the influence 
of Reichensperger that the cultural element was not 
excluded, but on the contrary became the most 
prominent feature of the work. Janssen drew the 
whole life of the people into his purview. Such a 
plan made, of course, much greater demands on a 
capacity for work than any of his predecessors had 
undergone. But he was determined not to spare 


338 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


himself in bringing forth something of which his 
fellow Catholics could be proud. 

At last, in March 1876, part of the first volume 
appeared. His friend Herder had done his best to 
give the book a worthy typographical garb. Janssen 
gave the work the sub-title: Intellectual and Spir- 
itual Condition of the People. While nearly all his 
forerunners had confined themselves to political 
events and the character of the outstanding figures, 
our author enters into the very heart of the nation. 
Before our eyes educational and scholarly activi- 
ties, the art and amusements of the common people, 
all of them illustrated by numerous citations from 
contemporary sources, pass in orderly review. In 
fact, it was Janssen’s method to weave his narra- 
tive almost entirely in the words of his authorities 
so that his works have not ineptly been compared 
to those colorful Roman mosaics. Although com- 
posed of countless little stones of divers colors, 
they reproduce the original with perfect fidelity. 
There was no lack of recognition. Appearing in the 
midst of the Kulturkampf, this work cheered the 
Catholics in the struggle in which they were so often 
taunted with the reproach of backwardness in schol- 
arship. The evidence of the relatively prosperous 
and happy condition of the people previous to the 
great Lutheran upheaval furnished a very effective 
argument against the endless tirades on the bless- — 
ings of the Reformation. 

But the success of the book among non-Catho- 
lics was even greater. For once the old saying, 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 339 


“Catholica non leguntur,” proved untrue. It would 
take too much space to quote the encomiums be- 
stowed upon our author by very competent non- 
Catholic critics. One must suffice. George Waitz, 
the famous editor of the Monumenta Germaniae 
Historica, simply declared: ‘‘ Janssen is now the 
first among living German historians.” And Ranke 
was still among the living! 

Janssen was not the man to rest on his laurels. 
While he devoted the greater part of his time to the 
continuation of his History, he undertook as a labor 
of love and as a recreation for mind and heart the 
biography of Count Leopold von Stolberg (1750- 
1819). As a student he had imbibed enthusiasm for 
the greatness of the Church and love for historical 
studies from the works of the noble convert, and 
when his grandson put the letters and literary legacy 
at the disposal of our historian he set to work with 
his usual energy. The life, narrated in two stately 
volumes, is made up almost entirely of the writings 
of his hero so that it might be called an autobiog- 
raphy (1876-1877). 

The following year the second half of the first 
volume of his History appeared. It completed his 
description of the conditions of the people on the 
eve of the great upheaval. The picture becomes less 
attractive. Agriculture, trade, and commerce are 
flourishing, but we perceive how excessive wealth 
and luxury begin to loosen the bonds of morality. 
The evils of capitalism, greed and usury, are only 
too apparent. Even less cheering is the decay of the 


340 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


old native law and the introduction of a foreign 
code, the Roman law with the consequent growth 
of absolutism. The chapters on the Holy Roman 
Empire exhibit the well-known features of weakness 
abroad and disunion at home. Again the reception 
of the book was all that could be desired. Especial 
praise was accorded to the chapters on the economic 
history of the time. 

The next four years are perhaps the most labori- 
ous in Janssen’s career. In the spring of 1879 his 
second volume was ready for the printer. “ Delving 
into the sad period which it treats,” says the author, 
‘““has moved me deeply, more than any previous 
research. I felt as if I were writing the history of our 
immediate future.” Prophetic words! The sub-title 
tells us what to expect: ‘‘ From the Beginning of 
the Political-Ecclesiastical Revolution to the Social 
Revolution of 1525.” We see the rise of the radical 
revolutionary party, the semi-pagan younger hu- 
manists, with their leader, the sceptical, mocking 
Erasmus. We divine the character of the coming 
catastrophe in their ugly controversy with Reuch- 
lin, in their deadly hatred against Rome and papal 
authority. Into this atmosphere steps Luther. The 
most fateful event was the association of the fiery 
demagogue with the revolutionary humanists, occa- 
sioned by the preaching of the Indulgence. We then 
hear of the rapid progress of the religious decline 
down to 1525. The picture of the downward course 
of the religious and intellectual life of the nation 
is followed by that of the great social upheaval, the 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 341 


Peasants’ War of 1525, not caused, indeed, but 
fostered by the religious revolution. The movement 
was crushed in an orgy of bloodshed and destruc- 
tion. It marks the turning point in the history of 
the Lutheran revolt. From now on territorial princes 
and aristocratically governed imperial cities become 
its standard bearers. This second phase, reaching a 
temporary stop in the Augsburg settlement of 1555, 
forms the subject of the third volume. The inde- 
fatigable Janssen, though almost exhausted by the 
herculean labors of the second volume, permitted 
himself no rest, and as early as October, 1881, the 
last sheets of the manuscript went to the printer. 
Janssen’s peculiar gift not only to press into service 
an enormous mass of material, but also to dispose 
of it in such a manner that the arrangement is clear 
and lucid and seems perfectly natural, is perhaps 
nowhere more evident than in this third volume. 
Chronological sequence and causal connection are 
so skilfully blended that the work might well excite 
the envy and despair of less gifted workers. Hun- 
dreds of printed and unprinted sources have each 
made their contribution to the great tableau of 
which every line is drawn with the consummate 
ease and sureness of touch of the master. One never 
loses one’s way in that forest of varied testimony. 
Decisive events and impelling causes stand out 
clearly and unmistakably. 

With the appearance of the second and third vol- 
umes the wave of praise from non-Catholic sources 
gradually subsided. Instead, such a storm of denun- 


342 CHURCHYAISTORIAN S 


ciation and passionate protest broke loose that the 
name of the humble college professor divided al- 
most all Germany into two camps. Every obscure 
scribbler in the Protestant camp felt called upon to 
denounce him. Even Gregorovius, the hostile his- 
torian of the medieval popes, remarked in disgust: 
‘‘On Janssen every Lutheran preacher and semi- 
narian vents his rage; to them he is an outlaw. The 
scolding and abuse is becoming unbearable.” But 
when men of standing in the world of scholarship 
joined in the attack, Janssen’s friends thought an 
answer imperative. Decisive for him was the letter 
of a Protestant friend, asking him: ‘“ Are you will- 
ing to let all this pass over you in silence? If you 
do not answer, you arouse the suspicion that you 
cannot, that you consider yourself beaten.” His an- 
swer: To my Critics, was a masterpiece of dignified, 
gentlemanly, yet crushing refutation. In many cases 
the opponent merely has his quotations or his refer- 
ences corrected, and the matter is settled. Here and 
there he takes the opportunity to explain more fully 
points of Catholic dogma and practice, where he 
shows himself a competent theologian. Some of his 
more honorable opponents declared themselves sat- 
isfied. Letters of congratulation poured in from all 
sides, even from the Lutheran camp. Nevertheless 
the storm increased in fury. A number of Protestant 
writers formed a Society for the History of the 
Reformation, with the avowed purpose of crushing 
Janssen. A wealthy German-American offered a 
prize of $5000 for the best refutation, but no one 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 343 


earned it. All hopes to destroy the influence of 
Janssen’s work proved vain. Its sale only increased, 
and among the purchasers there were more Protes- 
tants than Catholics. Janssen himself answered 
some of his later antagonists in a Second Word to 
My Critics. Gradually the storm subsided and 
made room for discussion more worthy of scholars. 
It is remarkable that during this campaign not 
one of the non-Catholic friends of Janssen— and 
he had many, among them men eminent in 
the world of art and_ scholarship — abandoned 
him. 

It was feared in some quarters that our historian 
might be drawn into endless controversy, and thus 
endanger the continuation of his History. But im- 
mediately after the completion of his Second Word 
to My Critics, in 1883, he returned to his custom- 
ary labors. Soon, however, another danger loomed 
up. Leo XIII, the great promoter of historical 
scholarship, had conceived the plan of calling Jans- 
sen to Rome and putting him in charge of the 
Vatican archives. There were other rumors of eccle- 
siastical dignities. Janssen was thunderstruck. Dig- 
nities of any kind held no charms for our humble 
college professor, and the prospect of being taken 
away from the study of his history filled him with 
horror. Luckily, influential friends made representa- 
tions in Rome, and Leo XIII gave up the plan. 
When Hergenroether, the first Cardinal-Archivist, 
died in 1890, the project of bestowing the sacred 
purple on Janssen once more frightened our his- 


344 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


torian, but owing to the intercession of Archbishop 
Roos of Freiburg the cloud passed away. 

His fourth volume appeared in May, 1885. It 
treated the conditions of the German people from 
1555 to 1580, that is, from the religious peace of 
Augsburg to the futile attempt at union by the 
Protestant princes in the so-called Formula of Con- 
cord. The story becomes less dramatic. It is the 
period of endless bickerings within the camp of the 
Reformers, abounding in bitter personalities and 
disgustingly vulgar treatment of the most sacred 
things. Faithful to his purpose of writing a history 
of the people, Janssen dwells on these theological 
battles only long enough to show the influence of 
the disedifying spectacle on the masses. Of these 
Bucer’s statement holds true, that ‘‘ the people con- 
sider themselves perfect Christians as soon as they 
know how to attack their adversaries.”’ Meanwhile 
the Empire’s decline of prestige continues. We are 
made acquainted with the influence of the Huguenot 
wars and of the rebellion of the Netherlands on 
German affairs, with the selfish attitude of the 
Lutheran princes in face of the Turkish danger, of 
those princes who could not declaim enough against 
the tyranny of Rome, yet often were in the pay of 
foreign potentates against their own people. Janssen 
then diverts our attention to more inspiring scenes. 
We see the beginnings of real reform, the reawaken- 
ing of Catholic life after the Council of Trent, the 
apostolate of St. Peter Canisius and his companions. 
The chapters on this Second Spring prove once again 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 345 


that the Church may at times exhibit all the symp- 
toms of decay of a merely human society, but that 
in her unexpected recovery she shows the divine 
element that is within her.— This time adverse 
criticism was remarkably reticent. A non-Catholic 
reviewer observed: ‘‘ Many a man has tried his luck 
with the previous volumes, but without much suc- 
cess. It is not likely that anybody will feel the im- 
pulse of breaking his teeth with the present one.” 
Despite failing health and an almost ruined nerv- 
ous system Janssen kept at his task, and the next 
year, 1886, brought out his fifth volume. According 
to the author’s confession, it cost him more labor 
and more mental depression than any of its prede- 
cessors. Throughout the narrative we hear the first 
rumblings of the terrible storm of the Thirty Years’ 
War. In the first part Janssen shows that the 
Lutheran and especially the Calvinist party aimed 
at nothing less than the overthrow of the house of 
Habsburg and the total destruction of the Catholic 
faith. We are next introduced to a survey of the 
effects of the religious polemics on the people. So 
constant and so rancorous had been the contest that 
it had eaten into the very vitals of the nation. All 
consciousness of a common brotherhood seemed to 
have been destroyed. No one has ever shown with 
such wealth of detail the poisonous effects of the 
religious revolution. The last part depicts the forma- 
tion of the battle fronts for the oncoming struggle, 
the alliances formed on one side and the other, and 
the disgraceful weakness and shortsightedness of 


346 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the imperial house of Habsburg. No one who reads 
these pages can speak of the purely defensive char- 
acter of the Lutheran and Calvinist preparations 
for war. 

With the year 1618 Janssen interrupts the politi- 
cal history and returns to the study of the intellect- 
ual and cultural conditions of the people with which 
he had begun his first volume. The sixth, and as it 
proved, the last volume of his History, appeared in 
1888, bearing the sub-title, Civilization and Culture 
of the German People from the End of the Middle 
Ages to the Beginning of the Thirty Years’ War. 
Janssen had, however, accumulated such a mass of 
material that on the advice of friends he resolved 
to devote a seventh volume to the same subject. 
Death overtook him before he could complete this 
project; but as his pupil and intimate friend, Dr. 
Pastor, undertook the task, we are the fortunate 
possessors of the entire work. The whole of the sixth 
volume is devoted to the art and literature of this 
period. It begins with a survey of artistic activity 
of the later Middle Ages and proves conclusively 
that German art had received a mortal wound 
through the religious revolt and its practical conse- 
quences. It ceased to be a popular art and became 
the servile handmaid of princely courts, where 
through foreign influences it lost all originality and 
spontaneity. The new teaching deprived it of the 
sources of inspiration, the glorification of the Eu- 
charistic Presence, the veneration of the Blessed 
Virgin and the Saints. Art was now frequently de- 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 347 


graded in the service of religious polemics. We are 
then given a picture of popular literature, more 
detailed than was usually found in the histories of 
literature. Popular song had ceased to be an ex- 
pression of the simple joy and humor of a happy 
people. Books and pamphlets full of satire and 
defamation have flooded the market. Dramatic 
literature has become the mirror of moral decay 
and vitiated taste. The epic and the story delights 
in the treatment of the most unsavory subjects. 
The lowest depth of depravity is reached in the 
widely spread literature on magic, occult arts, and 
devil manifestations. On reading through these 
chapters one ceases to wonder at the hold on the 
popular mind of witches and witchcraft trials. 

By this time criticism of the furiously hostile 
kind had become rarer. It was realized that our 
historian could not be silenced nor his influence be 
neutralized by charges of falsification or superficial 
information. His stupendous labors had amassed 
such an amount of evidence that in the main his 
thesis seemed proved. Several eminent historians, 
among them L. Freytag and F. Paulsen, admitted 
this. The Reformers were not actuated by the pure 
motives hitherto ascribed to them. The Reformation 
was not that blessing of the people that a certain 
tradition has represented it to have been. If among 
non-Catholic historians the attitude towards the 
Reformers and their work has become more cir- 
cumspect, Janssen must be given a large share of 
the credit. 


348 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


The man who had performed the herculean task 
was soon to be the victim of his zeal. The manu- 
script of the sixth volume was scarcely in the hands 
of the printer when the author began to sift the 
material he had collected for the story of economic 
and educational conditions of the period 1517 to 
1618. These were to form the contents of his next 
volume. At the same time he was constantly engaged 
in revising his former works, especially the earlier 
parts of his History, of which the publisher called 
for edition after edition. So great was its popularity 
that Janssen was forced to prepare the fifteenth edi- 
tion of the first volume while he was busy writing 
the first edition of his seventh volume. Stronger 
constitutions than his could not have kept up such 
a pace. From 1889 on there appear in his letters 
complaints that mental exertion is becoming in- 
creasingly harder. Although he had not yet given up 
his original plan of continuing his History to the 
end of the Empire (1806), he sometimes expressed 
misgivings about finishing even the seventh volume. 
His physicians, too, became alarmed, and insisted 
on a complete rest. “ After the seventh volume,” 
was his only answer. Sometimes, too, the nature of 
his studies added to his depression. “It is not easy 
for a Catholic priest,” he says in his diary, “ to 
renounce almost entirely all priestly occupation and 
to devote the best part of his energies to such pro- 
fane things and at the same time to have the feel- 
ing that one is in bad company. . . . Of the period 
I am engaged in the saying of the poet is only too 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 349 


true: ‘Man’s history is man’s disgrace.’”? He was 
not to enjoy the happiness of reaching even his 
immediate goal. A cold contracted on a visit to the 
graves of his dear friends in the Frankfurt ceme- 
tery developed into pneumonia. His overworked 
and always delicate constitution offered but little 
resistance. On the Vigil of Christmas, 1891, he 
passed away, in the arms of his priestly friend, 
Alexander Baumgartner, S. J. His death was the 
image of his life; the bystanders were deeply moved 
by his childlike faith, the peace and serenity with 
which he surrendered his soul to his Creator. He 
was grieved to leave his “magnum opus ” incom- 
plete, but consoled by the promise of his great pupil, 
Ludwig von Pastor, to bring it to a conclusion. 
Long before the end the storm of abuse against 
the great Catholic historian had given way to a 
juster estimate of his merits. It is generally ad- 
mitted by friend and foe that whatever are one’s 
individual convictions, Janssen cannot be ignored. 
The mass of evidence he accumulated forbids this. 
Has he achieved the ideal of objectivity which must 
always be before the mind of the historian? It 
would be rash to assert this of any historical writer. 
Janssen, too, has paid tribute to human weakness 
that always makes us fall short of the ideal. At 
times in depicting the life of the people, especially 
in his first volume, subsequent studies have taught 
us to distribute the lights and shadows more ex- 
actly. Later research, to no small degree inspired 
by his labors, to some extent has changed the picture 


350 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of German lands as they were on the eve of the 
revolt. Pastor, himself the continuator of Janssen’s 
work, admits that prior to the Lutheran movement 
there existed a rather wide-spread anti-Roman 
spirit, due in part to the abuses in the papal ad- 
ministration. One would wish, too, a comprehensive 
description of the clergy and of religious life in 
general as they were during the declining Middle 
Ages. Remissness, worldliness, and “ externalism ” 
in religious practice had their full share in nation- 
wide apostacy. Perhaps Janssen, in common with 
other Catholic historians, has at times stressed too 
much the evil effects and minimized the causes of 
the great catastrophe. — One would hesitate, too, to 
subscribe to every statement of our historian on the 
high standard of national art before the Reforma- 
tion and its consequent decay. The Renaissance was 
certainly a break with national traditions, but its 
influence had set in north of the Alps some time 
before the Lutheran movement. That many carping 
critics found among the innumerable citations of the 
six volumes a few misreadings of the sources and 
other minor inaccuracies is not surprising. To speak 
of conscious falsification is unjust to the author, and 
betrays a lack of insight into the difficulties that 
beset a work of such magnitude. 

During part of his career Janssen had been the 
object of violent abuse. Yet our historian was the 
last man to arouse personal antagonism. Indeed, his 
ability to disarm opposition by personal contact, 
and to make loyal and steadfast friends wherever 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 351 


he went, must be counted as one of his most strik- 
ing characteristics. What the anti-Catholic Frank- 
furter Zeitung said at his death is true: ‘‘ Janssen 
never had an enemy among those who knew him 
personally.” He possessed the irresistible charm of 
unselfish modesty that made him a welcome mem- 
ber of any circle. His sunny humor and childlike 
candor won the heart of even the most determined 
antagonist. It is astonishing to learn from his cor- 
respondence with how many men eminent in Church 
and State he was on terms of intimate friendship. 
The great Catholic leaders, Windthorst and August 
Reichensperger, in the midst of the parliamentary 
battles of the Kulturkampf, find time for numerous 
encouraging letters. Among his friends and corre- 
spondents one finds the names of the Cardinals 
Reisach, Franchi, and Manning, of scholars like 
de Rossi and Hettinger, of the well known Jesuits 
Kleutgen, Perrone, and Baumgartner, of the diplo- 
mats Huebner and Bach, and numerous others. 
Many distinguished non-Catholics considered it an 
honor to be counted among his friends, as, for in- 
stance, the Prussian ambassador von Sydow, the 
diplomat Ludwig von Gerlach, the painter Karl von 
Passavant. The man who.could win and hold so 
many friends of widely divergent views and states 
of life cannot have been the narrow, bigoted fanatic 
that some have represented him to be. To those who 
knew him best, his sincerity, his warm affection for 
the real welfare of the people, his loyalty to God 
and His Church, his truly heroic devotion to his 


352 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


labors, made him a model of historians, and as such 
he remains an inspiration to the humblest worker 
in his own chosen field. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 
A. BIOGRAPHY 


LuDWIG von Pastor, Johannes Janssen, 1829-1891, Ein 
Lebensbild (Freiburg, 1892). 

Lupwic von Pastor, Johannes Janssens Briefe, 2 vols. 
(Freiburg, 1895). 

The Stimmen aus Maria-Laach (since 1915 Stimmen der 
Zeit) brought detailed reviews as the single volumes 
of the History appeared, mostly from the pen of 
Alexander Baumgartner, S.J. See Vols. 10, 11, 17, 22, 
29, 31, 36, 46, 48. The Dublin Review (July, 1881, 
and January, 1882) under the title Recent Works on 
Germany in the 15th Century has a valuable study 
of Janssen’s position in the historical world by the 
well known Dutch historian, Paul Alberdingk Thijm. 
The Month, the periodical of the English Jesuits 
(March, 1893), contains a brief sketch of Janssen’s 
life and work by F. Galton, S.J. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON JANSSEN 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


FUETER (Historiographie Moderne, pp. 498, 578, 715- 
719, 749) discusses Janssen’s place in modern his- 
torical literature with his customary depreciation of 
the Catholic aspect of the History of the German 
People. 

DELBRUCK, Historische Methode des Ultramontanismus, 
in the Historische und politische Aufsdtze (1887, 


p. 5). 


JOHANNES JANSSEN 353 


Lenz, Kleine historische Schriften (Mainz, 1910). 

SCHWANN, J. Janssen und die Geschichte der deutschen 
Reformation (Berlin, 1893). 

Articles on Janssen’s History will be found in the fol- 
lowing periodicals: American Catholic. Quarterly Re- 
view, 1889; American Historical Review, 1895, 
1906, 1907, 1921; Berliner Nationalzeitung, 1887; 
Catholic Historical Review, 1921, 1925; Civilta Cat- 
tolica, 1890, 1909, 1915, 1922; English Historical 
Review, 1887, 1889, 1897, 1910; Goettinger Gelehr- 
ten-Anzeigen, 1887; Historische-Politische Blaetter, 
99, 118, 132, 159, 161; Historisches Jahrbuch, 1880- 
1925; Hochland, 1904; Katholik, 1876, 1893, 1895, 
1900; Zeitschrift fuer katholische Theologie, 1907; 
Zeitschrift fuer oeffentliche Angelegenheiten, 1886. 


DENIFLE (1844-1905) 


Rev. BONIFACE STRATEMEIER, O. P, S. T. Lr., PH.D. 
River Forest, Ill. 


MONG the historians of the Order of Preach- 
ers who contributed very remarkably to 
the science of history such as Bartholomew 

De Lucca, Saint Antoninus of Florence, Vincent of 
Beauvais, Abraham Bzovius, Natalis Alexander and 
Cardinal Orsi, the name of Henry Denifle holds a 
prominent place. 

The beautiful Tyrol was the native land and Imst 
the city where, on January 16, 1844, Joseph Denifle 
was born. His father, who was a school master, 
early imparted to him the rudiments of learning, 
and, as he gave signs of great promise as a student, 
he was sent to the seminary at Brixen. At the age 
of seventeen, the young Denifle sought and obtained 
admission to the Order of Preachers at Graz, in 
Austria, and was clothed in the habit of the Friars 
on September 22, 1861, receiving the name of Henry 
Suso. He had now set out on the way which he was 
to follow for all his years, a life of assiduous study, 
of successful teaching and of writing, during which 
he was to leave to posterity the monuments of his 
erudition and piety. 

During the years devoted to philosophical and 
theological study, the young friar was especially 

354 


DENIFLE 355 


given to the mastering of Aristotle and St. Thomas 
Aquinas. He was elevated to the priesthood in 1866. 
Three years later Denifle went to Rome in order to 
follow the lectures on the Summa of the Angelic 
Doctor in the College of St. Thomas, at the Min- 
erva, where he had as professor Father Thomas, 
later Cardinal Zigliara. Later he went to Saint Maxi- 
min near Marseilles and there he obtained the Lec- 
torate in Theology. He then occupied posts as pro- 
fessor in the Houses of Study of Hungary and 
Austria for ten years. On September 2, 1877, he 
passed the examination “ad gradus” before the 
Dominican General as a partial requirement for 
the degree of Master in Sacred Theology. 

In applying himself to the works of St. Thomas, 
Denifle was convinced of the necessity of a histori- 
cal consideration of the works of the Angel of the 
Schools. He found that in the study of the Summa 
and his other works as well, it was of great impor- 
tance to understand the sources of these great theo- 
logical works and for a long time he planned a 
commentary especially on the Summa from a liter- 
ary and historical standpoint. 

In 1873, Denifle wrote a series of articles in the 
Grazer Volksblatt on ‘‘ Tetzel and Luther,” an in- 
dication that even then his mind was occupied with 
a subject about which his last and perhaps his great- 
est work was destined to be written. From 1873 
onward, though he preached occasionally and with 
great success, the biography of Denifle is a narra- 
tion of ‘his literary and historical achievements. His 


356 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


life accordingly might be divided into periods char- 
acterized by works on Theology and Mysticism, 
the Medieval Universities, the Hundred Years’ War 
between France and England with its consequences 
to the Church and Luther and Lutherdom. 

Denifle’s first work in the field of German Medi- 
eval Mysticism appeared in 1873 under the title: 
Das Geistliche Leben — Eine Blumenlese aus den 
deutschen Mystikern. To get an idea of the work 
entailed in the field of mystical research, suffice it 
to state that this book comprises twenty-five hun- 
dred passages gathered from the Mystics grouped 
and embodied to illustrate the three stages of per- 
fection. In 1875 an article appeared in the His- 
torisch-politischen Blaetter under the caption “‘ Eine 
Geschichte der deutschen Mystik.” Another article 
published in 1875 in the same review was entitled 
“Der Gottesfreund im Oberland und Nikolaus von 
Basel.” In the Zeitschrift fur deutsches Altertum 
und deutsche Literatur of 1881 appeared the article 
‘“‘ Die Dichtungen des Gottesfreundes im Oberland.” 
The result of Denifle’s combined studies concerning 
the Gottesfreund was the discovery that the Gottes- 
freund was a myth. 

In November, 1880, Denifle was made an asso- 
ciate to the Dominican Master General at Rome 
where a new field of research awaited him. Leo XIII 
had ordered a critical edition of the works of St. 
Thomas and Denifle was commissioned to search 
for the best manuscripts. Within three years he 
had visited many libraries in Germany, England, 


DENIFLE 357 


France, Spain, Portugal, Austria, Holland and Italy. 
On the recommendation of Cardinal Hergenroether, 
Prefect of the Vatican Archives, Denifle was named 
on December 1, 1883, by Leo XIII as Sub-Archivist 
of the Vatican. He was also appointed a consultor 
of the Commissione Cardinalizia per gli Studi 
Storict. The advantages of his new position and the 
experience derived from his researches in the ar- 
chives of Europe enabled Denifle, after a study on 
Abbot Joachim of Fiori, the Evangelium Aeternum, 
and the University of Paris in the middle of the 
thirteenth century, to prepare an extensive work on 
the Universities of the Middle Ages. Denifle wished 
to accomplish this work in five large volumes. The 
first volume was to treat of the origin of the Uni- 
versities until 1400; the second, the development 
of their organization; the third, the origin of the 
University of Paris; the fourth, the development of 
the organization of this University until the end of 
the thirteenth century, and the last volume was to 
deal with the strife between the University of Paris 
and the Mendicant Orders. The only volume that 
appeared was the first: Die Entstehung der Univer- 
sitaten des Mittelalters bis 1400, published in Ber- 
lin (1885) and consisted of over 850 pages. In a 
lengthy introduction Denifle gives reasons for un- 
dertaking this work and therein he speaks on the 
literature that existed on the Medieval Universities 
which, according to his own admission, offered no 
particularly pleasant picture. Then, accordingly, he 
unfolds his own plan for the work and the reasons 


358 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


for using the method which he intended. He de- 
cided, according to his natural inclination, to begin 
at the bottom and to base his study entirely on the 
documents that were in part printed and in part 
first had to be searched for in the libraries and the 
archives. Although with regard to the University 
of Paris, the libraries and the archives at Paris 
would be of most avail, nevertheless with regard 
to the sum total of the history of the Medieval Uni- 
versities, the Vatican Archives would preponderate. 
Despite this, Denifle affirms that he was the first 
to have used the Papal Archives for this purpose. 
Aside from the manuscript material, Denifle em- 
ployed in the field of his research the vast and often 
out of the way printed literature. 

The large volume referred to is divided into five 
parts. The first division treats of the nomenclature 
of the medieval university and the concept of the 
same, such as studium, studium generale, univer- 
sitas, etc. And Denifle remarks that of all the desig- 
nations of the medieval university as an institution 
of learning, Studium Generale or Studium are alone 
in proper usage and official. 

The second division treats of the origin and de- 
velopment of the two oldest and most renowned 
universities, Paris and Bologna. As the factors that 
were effective toward the origin of the higher insti- 
tutes of learning Denifle designates the following: 
1. The cultivation of new methods in teaching. 2. 
The conferring and extension of high privileges. 3. 
The formation and expansion of academic corpo- 
rations. 


DENIFLE 359 


The third section treats of the origin and devel- 
opment of the other universities of Europe until 
1400. Of these superior institutions of learning, nine 
existed without letters of foundation from any rul- 
ing power, sixteen were founded by Papal briefs, 
nine came into being by imperial or sovereign to- 
gether with Papal letters; nine projected schools 
never came into existence. 

The fourth section treats of the universities in 
their relation to earlier schools. Denifle here cleared 
up the error of assigning the origin of the univer- 
sities to cathedral or cloister schools. This can be 
assigned as the origin of the University of Paris 
which was an evolution of the cathedral school of 
Notre Dame. This also holds true of Cologne and 
Erfurt. Otherwise the universities are new creations 
or, as is the case with Italy, they are evolutions of 
the town schools. Only with a small amount of these 
higher institutes of learning and especially Paris 
University was the theological faculty the basis of 
their evolution. With the greater half, theology was 
not taught in the early days. 

The fifth division deals with the reasons for the 
origin of the medieval universities. It is a compre- 
hensive treatise on the results of his researches in 
the work. Here he openly admits the relation be- 
tween secular and ecclesiastical power working for 
the foundations. 

The medieval universities are fundamentally crea- 
tions of the Christian spirit, which permeated their 
whole structure, in which Pope and Prince, the 
clergy and the laity, all had their befitting and au- 


360 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


thorized place. The monumental work, without any 
effort on the part of the author, becomes an apology 
for the universities of the Middle Ages. Whether 
they were the same as our concept or not, yet they 
met the needs of the Middle Ages perfectly and 
furnished the upper educational institutes with their 
modern requirements and aspect and therefore the 
foundations for the modern university. 

One of the greatest testimonies to the work of 
Fr. Denifle on the medieval universities was the 
fact that the French Government entrusted to him 
the editing of the Chartularium Universitatis Parisi- 
ensis, a documentary work on the Paris University. 
The Conseil général des Facultés de Paris had on 
December 28, 1885, decided upon the publication 
of this work. On March 27, 1887, on the suggestion 
of the President of the Conseil Denifle undertook 
the task and he was given the assistance of the 
Librarian of the Sorbonne, Emil Chatelain, as 
co-editor. 

Denifle immediately began work on the Char- 
tularium. In the following year he spent much time 
in Paris in various archival depots and in the dif- 
ferent libraries of the city. He resided with the 
Dominicans at Chatillon-sous-Bagneux. Here he also 
celebrated, on July 22, 1891, the silver jubilee of 
his priesthood. 

Denifle justified the confidence placed in him by 
the French Government in full measure. With the 
assistance of his able co-worker, Chatelain, he gave 
to the historian four large folio volumes of the 


DENIFLE 361 


Chartularium and two folio volumes of the Auc- 
tarium Chartularit in a little less than ten years. 
This standard work will ever remain the source for 
the history of the greatest university of the Middle 
Ages and will be a great aid to the student of medi- 
eval culture and educational achievement. 

The purpose of Denifle was above all to find the 
original documents and to edit them. When these 
were no longer to be had, he edited the oldest tran- 
scripts with notes on the discrepancies between the 
different ones. With the original documents he in- 
dicated no different readings except with Papal 
documents for which the Vatican “ Registri” of- 
fered material to vary the reading. Another care 
was to date the documents. And in case the 
sources were printed elsewhere, he always indicated 
this. 

The manuscript documents for his work were 
collected by Denifle in the archives and libraries 
of France, Germany, Italy, Spain and England. 
The National Archives and the archives of the 
University of Paris, the Vatican Archives, the ar- 
chives of Dijon, Troyes, Marseilles, Avignon, 
Rouen, Barcelona, Luzerne, the archives of various 
religious orders, the National, Arsenal, Mazarin 
and Genevieve Libraries at Paris, the Vatican and 
other Roman Libraries, the libraries of Munich, 
Vienna, Auxerre, Chartres, Toulouse, Rouen, Ox- 
ford, Cambridge, Erfurt, Leipzig, etc., all these 
furnished the stones of his monumental work. 

The first volume of the Chartularium appeared 


362 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


in 1889 at Paris. In the Introduction, Denifle gives 
a criticism of the works of Du Bouleys and Jour- 
dains. Then he gives an account of the earliest his- 
tories of the Paris University and then he dilates 
on the office of the chancellor and the rector of the 
University. In a Pars Introductoria he gives 55 
documents from 1163-1200 to the origin of the uni- 
versity proper. For the history of the development 
of Scholasticism in the second half of the twelfth 
century, valuable details are given. 

The Chartularium proper now follows for the 
period from 1200-1286, the period of the zenith of 
Scholasticism, and contains 530 documents. This 
wonderful array begins with the privilege of King 
Philip Augustus of the year 1200. The relations of 
the monarchs of France as well as the Popes (no- 
tably Gregory IX, Innocent IV, Alexander IV) with 
the Paris University are clearly set forth in a rich 
number of interesting documents. Much light is also 
thrown on the spiritual life at the University, the 
scientific history, the fostering of the scholastic 
method, the history of Aristotelianism in the thir- 
teenth century and for the scientific working of 
the various faculties. Fifty documents deal with the 
religious Orders, especially the Franciscans and the 
Dominicans. New light is thrown on the contro- 
versy between the Mendicants and the doctors of 
the University. For the biography, chronology and 
bibliography of the most famous scholastics this 
volume contains much valuable source material. 
Many notices are contained therein relative to the 


DENIFLE 363 


earlier authors of Summas. The historian of Scho- 
lastic philosophy and theology will find in this as 
well as in the other volumes of the Chartularium 
material of the utmost importance. 

The second volume, published in 1891, offers 661 
documents for the period between 1286-1350. In 
the Introduction, Denifle states that he examined 
200,000 letters from the Papal registers and that 
he used 8,000 in the notes. This second volume 
deals with the period of decline of the Paris Uni- 
versity and of scholasticism. Denifle finds the cause 
of this decadence to have been the neglect of the 
study of the sources of theology, the Scriptures and 
the Fathers. This second volume also gives valu- 
able details regarding the history of religious orders, 
the history of various scholastics and the history of 
the divers political and ecclesiastical, and theologi- 
cal controversies of the declining thirteenth century 
and the first half of the fourteenth. An appendix 
contains the oaths, statutes and calendars of the 
University. 

The third volume, given out in 1894, portrays in 
520 documents the further history of the University 
between 1350-1394, and deals with the period of 
the Great Schism. 

In 1897 appeared the fourth volume, comprising 
988 documents regarding the University’s history 
from 1394-1452. Notable among the rich informa- 
tion afforded are the documents relating to the trial 
of the Maid of Orleans. 

Simultaneous with the publication of the third 


364 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


and fourth volumes of the Chartularium appeared 
the first and second volumes of the Auctarium Char- 
tularii. These volumes contained the documents 
which in Denifle’s estimation were too lengthy for 
the Chartularium. 

The greatest recognition was accorded Fr. Denifle 
for this work. He received from the French Govern- 
ment a reward of 25,000 francs; in 1897 he was 
named, in the place of the deceased Wattenbach, a 
member of the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles- 
Lettres and also Correspondant de l'Institut de 
France. He also was made a Knight of the Legion 
of Honor. His achievement was also acclaimed by 
the greatest historians. By his history of the uni- 
versities and his Chartularium, Denifle merited the 
encomium of “generalium studiorum _historiae 
splendidissimus Auctor.”’ 

Aside from these works on medieval universities, 
Denifle wrote a number of works on different 
periods and phases of medieval culture and Church 
history. For the diffusion of medieval texts and 
studies Denifle, together with Ehrle, founded the Ar- 
chiv fir Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte des Mit- 
telalters, the first six volumes of which, appearing 
from 1885-1890, contains a series of erudite contri- 
butions by Denifle. 

Denifle’s vast knowledge of the Middle Ages, his 
solution of numerous historical problems as well as 
discoveries of new sources are explainable by his 
great accomplishments in the field of medieval 
paleography and diplomatics. In fact his knowledge 


DENIFLE 365 


in these auxiliary sciences to history, both practi- 
cal and theoretical, was extraordinary. He published 
a remarkable paleographical work entitled: Speci- 
mina Palaeographica Regestorum Pontificum ab 
Innocentio III ad Urbanum V, published at Rome, 
1888, and was presented by the personnel of the 
Vatican Archives as a tribute to Leo XIII, on the 
occasion of the golden jubilee of his priesthood. 
The iearned introduction and the splendid paleo- 
graphical annotations to each of the specimens are 
all the work of Denifle. The facsimiles are carefully 
chosen to illustrate the development and the history 
of the script of the Papal chancery. Denifle also 
published other studies on the Papal registers in 
different publications notably in the Archiv. 

Besides Denifle’s history of the universities of 
the Middle Ages and his Chartularium Universitatis 
Paristensis, he published kindred studies notably in 
the Archiv fur Literatur- und Kirchengeschichte re- 
ferred to above. In the same work he also wrote 
and gave texts valuable for the history of the scho- 
lastic method. In the Archiv, he also throws much 
light on the history of different religious orders, espe- 
cially the Mendicant institutes. 

The research work of Denifle for his Chartu- 
laritum in many archives led him to the publication 
of a work that is of great importance for French 
history of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In 
1897 appeared at Macon a stately volume of 600 
pages under the caption: La désolation des églises, 
monastéres, hépitaux en France vers le milieu du 


366 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


XV® siécle. Two years later at Paris was published 
the continuation of the same work under the title: 
La guerre de cent ans et la désolation des églises, 
monastéres et hopitaux: tom. I. Jusqwa la mort de 
Charles V (1380). 

The author tells us in a Foreword to the first vol- 
ume the genesis of this exceedingly interesting work. 
He had scrutinized page for page 300 volumes of 
registers of petitions in the Vatican Archives search- 
ing for documents and notes for his Chartularium. 
During the course of this research the thought oc- 
curred to him what a work he could have composed 
on the desolation of the churches of France toward 
the end of the Hundred Years’ War. And so he de- 
cided to peruse again the 300 volumes referred to 
though he had at the same time to examine several 
hundred more registers for the Chartularium. 

The title ‘‘ desolation ” is clearly explained through 
the sources the author gives. Under this heading he 
places all the material and spiritual misery brought 
upon the erstwhile flourishing ecclesiastical insti- 
tutes through the Hundred Years’ War. In the 
Preface to the work the author explains his purpose, 
method and the character of the history. The prin- 
cipal sources he employed were the registers of peti- 
tions from Martin V to Nicholas V, as well as other 
material gathered in the Archives of the Vatican. 
The printed French literature regarding churches 
and monasteries was also utilized to the utmost. 

In the first volume of the work Denifle published 
1063 hitherto unedited and unknown documents. 


DENIFLE 367 


They are carefully dated, the source indicated and 
explained by learned remarks. The documents are 
arranged according to the 123 dioceses into which 
France was divided in the fifteenth century. The 
documents graphically describe the ruin of the 
French churches during the Fifteenth Century, the 
demolition of churches, monasteries and hospitals, 
the decrease and abolition of church revenues, the 
scattering of monks and nuns, the damage done to 
religious worship, the weakening of ecclesiastical 
discipline — all these things present themselves to 
us most forcibly in the original documents. And in 
many other respects, these sources have their value 
and interest, especially for the historian of art, for 
the liturgist, the monastic historian and the canonist. 

It is characteristic of Denifle that whenever he 
undertook a scientific work he always saw the pos- 
sibilities of enlargement of his subject and of broad- 
ening his plan. In fact he seems to have had a mania 
for exhausting his subject and of never being con- 
tent to narrow it down to certain limits. Originally 
the second volume of the work under consideration 
was to give an elaboration of the source material 
printed in the first volume, but the friar was soon 
convinced that he would have to undertake the 
study also for the fourteenth century since the 
calamity reached back to the preceding century. 
The destruction of the churches and monasteries 
led him to the investigation of the various military 
engagements and successes that caused this desola- 
tion. So the second volume developed into a history 


368 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of the Hundred Years’ War itself, always, however, 
with a certain regard for the principal theme of the 
whole history. 

Denifle in this work undertook a very involved 
task and in the two volumes into which the second 
is divided, he describes the battles of that war to 
the death of Charles V, in 1380. Then he narrates 
the ruin in the various dioceses. The unpublished 
sources from which the author drew are the volumes 
of petitions from Pope Clement VI to the fourth 
year of the pontificate of Urban V, and many other 
documents of the Papal archives. Nor was he con- 
tent here for he searched all the printed materials 
as well. 

This work on the Hundred Years’ War received 
general recognition from historians. Battifol, Haller, 
Schrors — all are full of praise for this scientific 
work of the Subarchivist of the Vatican. In the 
year 1897, appeared the fourth volume of the Char- 
tularium, the second volume of the Auctarium and 
the first volume of the Désolation des églises. 

_ It is worthy of note that Denifle’s great French 
work on the Hundred Years’ War became the guide 
for the composition of his last work, his study on 
Luther and Lutherdom. His work on the Paris Uni- 
versity and the work just considered gave the tireless 
historian the inducement to further research for ma- 
terial dealing with the decline of the secular and the 
regular clergy in the fifteenth century. He pursued 
the various phases of the development of this deca- 
dence and at the beginning gave not the least thought 


DENIFLE 369 


about writing a work on Luther and Lutherdom. He 
prosecuted his studies on this decay into the six- 
teenth century and found when he had reached the ~ 
third decade of the century that Luther was in the 
midst of the debasement. Henceforth he could not 
put Luther aside and accordingly resolved to study 
the life of Luther back to the first years of his stu- 
dent life and his first years of teaching. To control 
the result of his researches, he reversed the process 
and followed Luther year by year in his downfall. 
His main object was to fix the precise thing that 
slowly drew Luther into the stream of the decay 
and finally made him the creator and mouthpiece of 
the group that represented the height of the decline. 

The chief sources for Denifle’s Luther und 
Lutherthum were, above all, Luther’s writings. Only 
after he had carefully studied these did he investi- 
gate the expositions of Luther’s life and teachings. 
One of the principal depots for this research was 
the Biblioteca Palatina of the Vatican Library. The 
newer literature on his subject was sent to him at 
Rome though he made several visits to Germany 
to visit the libraries personally. 

In the autumn of 1903 the first volume of this 
work was published in Mainz, a tome of 860 pages. 
A numerous edition was exhausted within four 
weeks. The storm of discussion and agitation pro- 
voked by the book will be passed over to consider 
the work as a scientific accomplishment. The sig- 
nificance of Denifle’s work on Luther for the scien- 
tific investigator rests on the following points: 


379 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


1. Denifle secured a reputation as an expert in 
Lutheran research and as a textual critic of Luther’s 
works by his handling of the Weimar edition, the 
Kritischen Gesamtausgabe of the works of Luther. 
From the viewpoint of historical criticism, he showed 
that the edition gave signs of much haste and con- 
tained a series of errors that he was able to indicate 
from a rigorous examination of the originals. 

2. The author made a careful study of Luther’s 
inner life and threw remarkable light on the psy- 
chological problem of Luther’s apostasy. He showed 
that Luther’s later statement with regard to his 
soul history, the process of his change, did not agree 
with his earlier statement and was untrustworthy. 

3. Denifle undertook a critical analysis of the 
teaching and writing of Luther viewed from the 
standpoint of the history of dogma and showed the 
deficiency and superfluity of Luther’s theological 
training. Luther’s knowledge of the scholastics was 
negligible. Nevertheless he gave profuse pronounce- 
ments on them. 

4. Denifle took the Protestant study of Luther 
and the history of dogma to task summarily. He 
makes the statement that no one comprehended 
Luther less than the Protestant theologians and the 
biographers of Luther. 


It was to be expected that the energetic language 
of Denifle in his Luther was not to go unanswered 
by the Protestant theologians. A number of them, 
Harnack, Seeberg, Kohler, Kolde, Baumann, Wal- 


DENIFLE. 371 


ther, Fester, Sodeur, appeared against him in replies. 
None of these silenced the friar. He promptly re- 
sponded in a work that appeared in March, 1904, 
under the title: Luther in rationalistischer und 
christlicher Beleuchtung. Prinzipielle Auseinander- 
setzung mit A. Harnack und R. Seeberg. In May, 
1904, appeared the second edition of the first part 
of the first volume, in which Denifle did not re-. 
treat one step from his former position. The sec- 
ond part was brought out in 1905 and the third 
in 1906 by Father Albert Weiss, O. P. He also got 
out the Second Volume for which the author left 
material in 1908. 

Father Denifle died on June 10, 1905, at Munich, 
while on his way to Cambridge where he and his 
friend Father now Cardinal Ehrle, S. J., were to be 
made Honorary Doctors of that University. He was 
laid to rest in the crypt of the Basilica of St. Boni- 
face, Munich. 

Denifle’s achievements are excellently summed 
up in the encomium of the University which was 
to be pronounced on the occasion of his reception 
of the Doctorate: 


Raetiae inter montes, fluminis Aeni prope ripas, olim 
natus est Sanctae sedis Romanae tabularius doctissimus, 
qui Praedicatorum Ordini insigni adscriptus, historiae 
praesertim studiis sese dedicavit. Non modo Pontificum 
Romanorum res gestas celebravit, sed etiam Medii aevi 
Universitates plurimas penitus exploravit: Universitatis 
Bononiensis Statuta antiqua, Universitatis Parisiensis 
Chartularium, opus laboris immensi, erudite et diligenter 
edidit; calamitates denique ab ecclesia Gallicana in 


372 CHURCH. ‘HISTORIANS 


saeculo decimo quinto toleratas luculenter explicavit. 
Ut ad Germanos transeamus, non hodie prolixius pro- 
sequemur neque Martinum Luther, ab eodem ad fidem 
monumentorum nuper depictum, neque scriptores illos 
mysticos, in litterarum Archivis ab ipso et a collega ejus 
magno conditis, olim accurate examinatos. Italiam potius 
petamus, Romam ipsam et Palatium Vaticanum invisa- 
mus, et Pontificem illum venerabilem, poetam illum 
Latinum, animo grato recordemur, qui virum doctrinae 
tam variae dotibus instructum Sanctae sedis tabularium 
merito nominavit. 

Duco ad vos virum doctissimum reverendum patrem 


HENRICUM DENIFLE. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


“De Vita et scriptis Magistri Henrici Denifle, Com- 
menta Varia ” and ‘‘ Necrologium Fratrum Sacri Ordinis 
Praedicatorum ” in Analecta Sacri Ordinis Fratrum Prae- 
dicatorum, Vol. VII (series secunda), Rome, 1905. Acta 
Capituli Generalis Difinitorum S. O. P. Viterbi, 1907, 
Rome, 1907. D. Dr. Martin Grabmann, P. Heinrich De- 
nifle, O. P. Eine Wurdigung feiner Forschungsarbeit. 
Mainz, 1905. Dr. Hermann Grauert, P. Heinrich De- 
nifle, O. Pr., Ein Wort zum Gedachtnis und zum Frieden. 
Ein Beitrag auch zum Luther-Streit. Freiburg im Breis- 
gau, 1900. 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR (1854- _—+) 


VerY Rev. FELIx FELLNER, O.S.B. 
St. Vincent Archabbey, Beatty, Pa. 


ISTORICAL science has been developed 

to a remarkable degree during the last 

generation. It contributed in many ways 
not only to a better understanding of past events 
but also to a more amiable relation with men of the 
present times. One of the most prominent promoters 
of this science in the realm of Church History is 
Dr. Ludwig von Pastor. 

In 1914 Dr. Lucian Pfleger wrote in the His- 
torisch-Politischen Blaetter: ‘‘ Ludwig von Pastor’s 
renown as an historian is international and unques- 
tionable.” Since that time many changes have taken 
place in the world, but our historian not only con- 
tinued his studies for the benefit of all mankind, 
he extended and deepened them, and today we can 
say without fear of contradiction that he has no 
rival as “ the Historian of the Popes.” 

Ludwig von Pastor was born at Aachen, on the 
31 January 1854. His father, a prominent merchant 
of that city and a deeply religious Lutheran, per- 
suaded the mother, a Catholic, to have their oldest 
son baptized by the local minister. Without doubt 
Herr Pastor, whose ancestors had long been asso- 
ciated with this Protestant congregation, showed 
thereby that he intended to raise the child in ac- 

Beste 


374 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


cordance with the principles of his own religious 
belief. There was, however, no contract made as to 
this point. In 1860 business affairs induced the 
family to transfer the domicile to Frankfort a. M. 
Four years later Herr Pastor died. 

Both these events were of great consequence for 
young Ludwig. The most important was the change 
in his religious education; for Frau Pastor deter- 
mined to remain in Frankfort and to bring up her 
children as Catholics. Among his teachers Father 
Siering, the tutor, Father Tyssen, the pastor, and 
Dr. Johannes Janssen, a friend of the family, exer- 
cised the greatest influence on our future historian. 
Naturally the early death of the father led the 
mother to the thought of educating her oldest son 
for a business career to enable him later to manage 
the extensive mercantile affairs of the family. Lud- 
wig himself showed a predilection for the study of 
Natural Sciences and Geography. But Professor 
Janssen convinced mother and son that he had ex- 
traordinary talents for History. It is related that he 
came to this conclusion through an essay on the 
value of the colonies of England to their mother- 
country, in which his pupil, at such an early age, 
showed remarkable talents by distinguishing well 
between the important and non-important points of 
the subject. Thus as Leopold von Ranke diverted 
George Waitz from Law to History, and molded 
him into his most prominent disciple, Janssen, we 
may say, “discovered” the talents of Pastor, who 
became his great successor. 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 375 


At that time two events contributed largely to 
direct our student’s attention to Rome and to the 
popes. He read with great enthusiasm J. Fichard’s 
Italia which had been published half a century be- 
fore in Frankfort. Later he acknowledged that this 
book made a lasting impression on him. But above 
all a copy of Ranke’s History of the Popes, the gift 
of his professor Janssen, must be mentioned as de- 
cisive in his development to historical fame. As he 
studied and admired this classic in history he fre- 
quently said to himself: “If Ranke, a Protestant 
who had no access to the Vatican Archives, could 
give us such a grand picture of this great subject, 
how much more perfect must not be a description 
by a Catholic who has a true concept of the papacy 
and who would have access to this first depositary 
of historical sources! ” Thus our young historian of 
not yet twenty years of age already made plans for 
a work that required a lifetime of constant research. 
And with living faith, great talents, extraordinary 
opportunities, tireless energy and a long life all in 
his favor, he became the rival and finally the supe- 
rior of Ranke. 

It may be interesting to hear what his professor 
of history thought of him at that time. 

In 1875 Pastor graduated at the local gymnasium 
and by Janssen’s advice went to the University of 
Louvain, to specialize in History. On this occasion 
his teacher wrote to Professor Paul Alberdingk 
Tjim the following lines: “ The student Pastor who 
is going to Louvain will please you. As long as I 


376 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


am teaching I had no pupil that was more talented. 
In him every good seed will fall on good ground. 
He is above everything else a sincere Catholic and 
a painstaking student. Every favor shown him I 
will consider a personal favor and I will be grate- 
ful for such tokens of friendship.” 

At Louvain Pastor wrote his first historical essay 
for publication, entitled Eine Kritik der Quellen- 
kunde zur deutschen Geschichte von Waitz. He in- 
tended to have it printed in the Historisch-Poli- 
tische Blaetter and sent it to his former professor 
to censor and to recommend it. But he must have 
been surprised when he received the following an- 
swer: ‘“‘The theme is well worked out; the style 
must be improved before it can be published; the 
penmanship is so bad that the proper nouns are 
illegible; during the next vacation months we will 
revise it, you will rewrite it and after these changes 
are made Mr. Binder may accept it.” (The article 
was later published in a different form in the 
Katholik.) 

In 1876 Pastor matriculated at the University 
of Bonn and attended the lectures of Karl Menzel, 
Morel Ritter and Henry Floss. His stay in this 
town, although short, became important from the 
associations that he formed there and which con- 
tributed much to his success. Here he was introduced 
into the Kaufmann family and later, in 1882, chose 
the only daughter of that staunch Obderbuerger- 
meister as his life’s companion. She became not only 
his wife and the mother of his children, but also an 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 377 


assistant in his literary work. Here also he formed 
a friendship with three men who, as long as they 
lived, aided him by counsel and patronage: August 
Reichensperger, sometimes called the German 
Montalembert, George von Hertling, later Chan- 
cellor of the Empire, and Hermann Cardauns, the 
well-known literary critic and for many years chief- 
editor of the Koelnische Volkszeitung. At one time 
his talents were already recognized by the cele- 
brated circle of churchmen and artists of Mainz 
founded and directed by Emmanuel von Ketteler. 
From this association he learned to appreciate the 
value of monuments of art in the study of a given 
period of history, particularly that of the Renais- 
sance. 

Pastor’s next aim was to attend the lectures of 
some of the famous professors of history at the 
University of Berlin. Here he studied under George 
Waitz and Karl Nitsch and was introduced to Leo- 
pold von Ranke. But while always admiring the 
eminently scientific work of these men, the aca- 
demic atmosphere of Berlin never appealed to him. 
On the contrary he felt at home at once at the Uni- 
versity of Vienna, where he matriculated in 1877, 
and Onno Klopp, the author of the standard work 
on the Thirty Years’ War, received him into his 
house with open arms. Without doubt this fearless 
champion of historic truth exercised, next to Jans- 
sen, the greatest influence upon young Pastor. In 
many ways Klopp’s ideals to present the truth with- 
out caring either for praise or contradiction became 


378 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


a guiding star in the literary activity of our his- 
torian. 

Finally at the invitation of J. B. Weiss, the well- 
known author of the Weltgeschichte, Pastor entered 
the University of Graz to apply for the doctorate 
in philosophy. His thesis Die Reunionsbestrebungen 
waehrend der Regierung Karls V showed original- 
ity. He received the coveted title and he decided to 
go to Rome to continue his researches in the his- 
torical field which he had chosen long ago and for 
which he had already gathered much material: ‘“ The 
History of the Papacy during the Reformation.” 

At that time one question was preéminently in 
his mind: the access to the Vatican Archives. In his 
studies on the attempts made by Charles V and 
others to reéstablish union after the outbreak of the 
Reformation the work of Cardinal Contarini in Ger- 
many in 1541 presented a number of difficulties. 
Various circumstances led him to believe that these 
could only be solved by an examination of the origi- 
nal documents and he surmised that these were in 
the secret Papal Archives. In his zeal for obtaining 
this information he determined to apply for this 
most extraordinary permission. His endeavors and 
his success must forever elicit the thanks of all 
honest historians of the civilized world. 

There exist various accounts of this coup d’état 
in modern historical research. The following facts 
are taken from his own address of welcome to Car- 
dinal Francis Ehrle, S. J., at the Anima in Rome, 
17 December 1922. He said he knew that the papal 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 379 


secret archives had never been opened to any one 
except to a limited degree and for very special pur- 
poses. Moreover he was well aware that in 1870 on 
account of the indiscretion of an official of this de- 
partment, Pope Pius IX had ordered them closed 
altogether to all persons except the Pope, the Car- 
dinal Secretary of State and the Prefect of the 
Archives. Nevertheless he determined to get access 
to this much coveted historical treasure. As he 
believed that patronage of ecclesiastical dignitaries 
would be the surest means for obtaining this privi- 
lege he wrote a petition and applied to a number 
of churchmen for recommendation. Among these 
Msgr. Jacobini, the Apostolic Nuncio at Vienna, 
later Papal Secretary of State, Msgr. de Montel and 
Msgr. de Waal, a literary friend of Dr. Janssen 
cheerfully endorsed his efforts. When he presented 
his petition to Cardinal Nina, then papal Secretary 
of State, he became more than ever aware of the 
difficulties that had to be overcome. How can I, 
said the kind churchman, grant you this privilege 
of entering the papal archives, when not even Car- 
dinals are allowed to enter under pain of excom- 
munication? To this Dr. Pastor replied: ‘‘ Your 
Eminence, I do not ask that I be allowed to enter, 
I will be glad if the tomes are brought out for in- 
spection.”’ This answer pleased the Cardinal so well 
that he promised his assistance. But in spite of 
such help and the encouragement from Cardinals 
Hergenroether, Franzelin and Pitra the majority in 
the Sacred College was opposed to such radical 


380 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


changes in the policy of this Department. Undoubt- 
edly most petitioners would have considered the 
decision final. Pastor thought otherwise. He wrote 
a new petition describing the exact scope of his 
work and asked for an audience with the Holy 
Father himself. This finally brought the desired re- 
sult. First he received the personal privilege of the 
use of the Archives and he could examine the de- 
sired volumes in the scriptorium of the Library. 
Later Cardinal Hergenroether, a special patron of 
the historian, was appointed Prefect of the Depart- 
ment and he granted him greater liberty in the ex- 
amination of the documents. Finally, 13 August 
1883, by a special Brief Saepenumero considerantes 
Pope Leo XIII threw the whole Archives open to 
all the historians of the world. Up to that time no 
such offer had been made by any ruler, civil or 
ecclesiastic. The results of this generous measure 
are well known today. Neither Burckhardt, Voigt, 
Gregorovius, Ranke nor Creighton had access to 
these treasures, even Reumont’s privilege in this 
respect having been limited. 

Naturally students from all nations flocked to 
Rome, to profit by this papal bounty, but none 
made better use of these treasures than our his- 
torian and later, in 1888, he was granted some spe- 
cial favors for his research work. What the gen- 
erous pope himself thought of this permission is 
evident from the following: On the 24 of February 
1884 he granted an audience to a number of his- 
torians, among them Cardinal Hergenroether, Msgr. 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 381 


de Waal, Father Denifle, Dr. Ehses and Professor 
Pastor. After Dr. Pastor in the name of all had 
thanked the Pontiff for his generosity towards his- 
torical science the Holy Father answered: ‘‘ Owing 
to this decree you have good advantages over 
Ranke. Indeed the joy of historians must be great, 
because they are able to get new material from this 
depositary of documents. The fact that many of 
these writings have never been used and some not 
even been known, must increase the value of your 
work considerably. Naturally it will also spread 
your fame as an historian. However, our highest 
aim in this grant was the honor of God and the 
glory of His Church.” Then addressing all the his- 
torians present he said: ‘“ True history must be 
written from the original sources. Therefore we 
opened the Vatican Archives to the historians for 
investigation. We have nothing to fear from the 
publication of these documents. (Non abbiamo 
paura della pubblicita det documentt.) Every pope, 
more or less, worked, some even under the greatest 
difficulties, for the propagation of the kingdom of 
God on earth and among all nations, for the Church 
is the mother of all. . . . Work courageously and 
perseveringly, not only for earthly reward and 
worldly honor, but for the glory of Him that He 
may crown these labors with heavenly bliss.” 

Pastor showed his gratitude to the pope by dedi- 
cating the first volume of his History of the Popes 
to Leo XIII, the Eroeffner des Vatikanischen 
Archivs. 


382 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


But before this came from the press our historian 
passed through the most critical period of his 
life. 

In 1880 he determined definitely to devote him- 
self to the teaching and the writing of history. The 
most difficult question, however, was the selection 
of a prominent University, where a sincere Catho- 
lic professor would be received and later promoted 
as he deserved. Owing to the Kulturkampf he saw 
no such opening in Germany. This induced him to 
apply to the Ministry of Education at Vienna to be 
admitted as Associate Professor at the University 
of Innsbruck. But even in Catholic Austria the 
opposition to such men, whom they called ultra- 
montane, was so strong that he had to wait more 
than a year before this was granted. Dr. Janssen 
wrote, 8 January 1881, about this to Johanna Pas- 
tor: “Ludwig who is suffering from sore eyes is 
still here. Eleven months have passed since he ap- 
plied for this position which is usually granted 
within a month. It is indeed very deplorable that 
the liberal Ministry of Education at Vienna does 
not admit a Catholic into the faculty of the Univer- 
sity of Catholic Tyrol although, as Professor Stumpf 
writes, all his testimonials and his trial lecture were 
very satisfactory.” Even after he was admitted sev- 
eral of his academic colleagues put everything in 
his way to forestall any promotion to an ordinary 
professorship. In 1886, however, he became “ ex- 
traordinary ” professor, in 1887 ordinary lecturer 
of modern history at that same seat of learning 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 383 


and from that time his rise in the academic world 
was rapid. Numerous universities granted him hon- 
orary degrees, the Austrian emperor raised him 
to the rank of hereditary nobility and in rgor his 
country of adoption entrusted him with the direc- 
torship of the Austrian Historical Institute in Rome. 
The entrance of Italy into the World War forced 
him to leave the Eternal City, but in 1920 he re- 
turned to Alma Roma, this his second home, as 
ambassador of the Austrian Republic at the Vati- 
can. The Holy See has repeatedly expressed its ad- 
miration for him by decorations and documents. 
Our present Holy Father, Pope Pius XI, wrote in 
1922: “Dilecto Filio in Christo eidemque Exmo 
Viro Ludovico de Pastor Romanorum Pontificum 
Historiographo celeberrimo in signum singularis 
benevolentiae cum Apostolica Benedictione. Pius, 
Leds be Bing 

Ludwig von Pastor is of small stature, but of 
robust appearance. His almost constant work with 
old documents brought about a very annoying short- 
sightedness. This cannot but increase our admira- 
tion for his tireless energy. Several times extraor- 
dinary tasks caused a nervous breakdown which 
forced him to discontinue his labors for a time. 
Invariably, however, as soon as his health permitted, 
he resumed his researches with renewed zeal. Early 
in life he chose as his motto ‘“‘ Vitam impendere 
Vero” and he follows this guide with unflinching 
ardor, his opponents may say with too passionate 
devotion to the Church. He is subject to the pro- 


384 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


verbial professorial absentmindedness and _fre- 
quently amuses his friends by relating some episode 
connected with this weakness. Very devoted to his 
family and to his students he shrinks from no sac- 
rifice if he sees any of them wronged. To give only 
one example: In 1901 Dr. Kempf of the University 
of Munich wrote a severe criticism on the first vol- 
ume of the Geschichte des deutschen Volkes of 
Father Emil Michael, a young Jesuit scholar and a 
student of our Professor at Innsbruck. As Dr. Pas- 
tor was a member of the editorial staff of the His- 
torisches Jahrbuch in which this criticism was to 
be published, he sent a letter of protest to Dr. 
Joseph Weiss, the editor-in-chief. When this proved 
futile, he appealed to his friend, Dr. von Hertling, 
then President of the Goerres Society (under whose 
auspices the above named Journal was published). 
It seems, however, that the printing of the article 
had already advanced to such a stage, that the edi- 
tor-in-chief deemed it advisable to publish it to- 
gether with Dr. Pastor’s protest. Still this was unsat- 
isfactory to our historian. He telegraphed at once his 
resignation from the editorial staff to Dr. Weiss. 
The latter could do nothing else than put into the 
next issue the whole correspondence and express his 
regret of losing such a prominent contributor. To- 
day Dr. Pastor’s standpoint in this controversy is 
quite generally approved by historians. Michael’s 
history of the cultural conditions of Germany dur- 
ing the later Middle Ages (in six volumes) is the 
most important work on this subject. It has been 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 385 


compared to Janssen’s History of the German 
People and might be called its first part. Similar 
controversies with Drs. Bachmann, von Druffel and 
Schnitzer prove that in matters of faith and historic 
truth, whenever the latter is once firmly established 
by authentic documents, he knows no compromise 
or palliation. This attitude, however, implies by no 
means that he is obstinate in his views. The very 
fact that he is ever ready to amend his literary 
productions and that he has recast so many of 
his earlier editions is sufficient proof of this state- 
ment. 

During the last fifty years Pastor’s codperation 
has been sought in almost all works on the Fifteenth 
and Sixteenth Centuries. At present no good history 
of the Church of that period can be published with- 
out quoting from his History of the Popes. His as- 
sociation with historical publications of Europe has 
been very extensive. He was a contributor to Her- 
der’s Staatslexikon; he succeeded Cardinal Hergen- 
roether on the editorial staff of the Kirchenlexikon; 
he wrote the “‘ History of the Papacy from the Four- 
teenth to the Seventeenth Century” for the Ency- 
clopedia Britannica. At the same time he was one of 
the co-editors of the WHistorisches Jahrbuch, of 
the Historische-Politische Blaetter, contributed ar- 
ticles to the Hochland and to the other promi- 
nent Catholic periodicals of Germany and Austria, 
to the Tdrtenelemi Tar of Hungary, the Revue 
des Questions historiques of France and to several 
Italian magazines. 


386 CHURCH HISTORIANS 
His principal works are: 


Die kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen waehrend der Re- 
gierung Karls V. (1879). 

Johannes Janssen, ein Lebensbild. (1892). 

August Reichensperger. (1899). 

Allgemeine Dekrete der Roemischen Inquisition. 1555- 


1597. (1912). 

Janssen-Pastor: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit 
dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. 8 Vol. 

Geschichte der Paepste. 


These last two are by far the most important and 
established his fame as an historian. 

In regard to the first only a few words. In 1891 
at Msgr. Janssen’s death only six volumes of his 
epochal work The History of the German People 
at the End of the Middle Ages had been published. 
By his last will Dr. Janssen entrusted all the manu- 
scripts to his former pupil and late associate, Dr. 
Pastor. Without doubt no scholar at that time was 
better equipped and more able to continue this great 
work of presenting to the world the first cultural 
history of the Reformation of Germany. He had 
already assisted this “‘ Pathfinder in Reformation 
History ” in the publication of previous volumes. 
Dr. Janssen wrote, 29 November, 1888, to Fr. A. 
Baumgartner, S. J.: “ Pastor is here and read the 
first ten sheets of the sixth volume. He found great 
pleasure in this work, he says, because I avoided 
extreme statements especially in the description of 
the Renaissance.”’ A comparison of the first volumes 
of this history edited by Janssen and the subsequent 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 387 


editions published by our historian will at once re- 
veal the work of the latter. The plan is Janssen’s 
own, the execution shows Pastor’s tireless activity. 
Without changing the spirit of the work he emended 
and improved it in matter and form, until it is now 
as much Pastorian as it began Janssenian. To give 
only one example: The first edition of the first 
volume comprised 615 pages, the ninth (Janssen’s 
last) contained 628 and the present, the twentieth 
has 838. Moreover, the same first volume had nine 
pages of “ Literature ” and eight pages of “ Index,” 
the last contains twenty-seven of the former and 
thirty-eight of the latter. But what is more im- 
portant, Janssen’s literary heir not only added much 
material and incorporated into these new editions 
the result of modern historical research on the sub- 
jects in question, but as he himself improved in ob- 
jective presentation and literary form he gradually 
perfected also Janssen’s whole work. In the first edi- 
tions the vivid style of the author seemed to many 
opponents the expression of a gigantic propaganda 
against Protestantism. Today this objection is 
hardly ever made by scholars. All this brought it 
about that the work is now quoted as Janssen-Pas- 
tor: the History of the German People. Finally our 
historian, it seems, felt the necessity of supplying 
new material that was not or could not be incorpo- 
rated into the original work. Therefore he began in 
1898 a Commentary on the same, the Erlaeuter- 
ungen und Ergaenzungen zu Janssen’s Geschichte 
des deutschen Volkes. 


388 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


In many ways Pastor’s continuation of Janssen’s 
history was a work of love and gratitude towards 
him who had guided him in the beginning of his 
historical career as a teacher and friend. This is 
especially evident in his biography and the publica- 
tion of the letters of this his master. Every student 
of them will agree with Dr. Fr. Dittrich who called 
Janssen’s. Lebensbild by Pastor a literary monu- 
ment for a great historian, a testimony of reverence 
of a grateful disciple and an inspiration for a 
thoughtful reader. 

The work, however, by which our historian is best 
known is his History of the Popes from the Close 
of the Middle Ages. It is his Opus magnum, consid- 
ering the time which he spent on it or the impor- 
tance of the subject which he treated in it or the 
talents which he showed by it. The first edition of 
the first volume was published in 1886, the tenth 
volume is now ready for publication. A number of 
them have two sections and many of them have 
been rewritten. At times the translators cannot keep 
pace with these new editions. At present Pastor’s 
history is being translated into English, French, 
Italian and Spanish. The English version comprises 
fourteen volumes, corresponding to six of the origi- 
nal German edition, and therefore the complete 
translation of what has been published so far will 
have at least twenty octavo volumes of four hun- 
dred to five hundred pages each. | 

Pastor’s aim in this history differed from that of 
every other Church-Historian. 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 389 


In 1829, G. H. Pertz, the well-known first editor 
of the modern classic in documentary collections, 
the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, wrote: “ Die 
beste Verteidigung der Paepste ist die Enthuellung 
ihres Seins.” These words which our author chose 
as the motto of his first volume indicate in the fewest 
words the aim of Pastor in writing this history of the 
Popes of modern times. No better defense of the 
Popes of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries has 
been written. Very naturally as a true and trained 
historian he scrupulously avoided everything that 
savored of apologetical tendencies. For example: A 
comparison between the second (German) edition of 
the third volume (1895) (which corresponds to the 
fifth and sixth English volumes) and the seventh 
edition (1924) will prove that the statement in the 
Catholic Historical Review (October, 1925) about 
Pastor’s aim in writing history is not correct. The 
author of this article says: ‘“‘ Pastor in seeking the 
justification of the papacy was compelled according 
to his conclusions to deal harshly with the friar 
(Savonarola).” In the latest edition (1924) our 
historian not only quotes twenty-five of the thirty- 
five authorities mentioned in the treatise above, but 
in his “‘ Notes” he has many more sources favoring 
his views in this perplexing question and in a spe- 
cial ‘ Nachtraege” (III, 2, page 1143) he answers 
the very latest defense of the friar by Dr. Schnitzer 
(1923). Evidently the writer of the article in this 
Review had not the latest edition of the third vol- 
ume of the German edition at hand. 


390 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


In a similar manner Pastor answered already in 
1891 the objection that he is plagiarizing. The first 
critic who asserted this was Dr. Bachmann of the 
University of Prague (Literaturzeitung, 18 Octo- 
ber, 1890). Our historian replied in an article in the 
Historisches Jahrbuch (XVI, 455-471) in which he 
disproved these assertions with so many and so 
weighty arguments, that his literary opponent was 
completely silenced. For the student of Pastor’s 
History this article is also interesting because he 
finds therein another objection solved: that he omits 
parts that may be against such an “ a priori history 
of the popes.” He says: “‘ What would this history 
be if I wished to write a detailed history of every 
country? With the same plea that Dr. Bachmann 
demands such a history of the empire, a French 
critic might want one of France, an English writer 
a description of the religious condition of Great 
Britain, an Italian a minute account of the dealings 
of every town with the Holy See.” 

In a second defense against Dr. von Druffel of 
the University of Munich and others (Vol. II, 745- 
782) he quotes from the criticism of Merkur ‘ that 
he was most exact in his references, giving in every 
case the sources,” and he adds, ‘“‘I do not belong 
to those who want to say better something that has 
already been well said. In such an extensive work 
as this I must rely on the verdicts of specialists in 
a particular field, as I have indicated in the preface 
of the first volume.” 

We may safely say that ke has already written a 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 301 


defense of his verdict about the moral failings of 
Alexander VI even after the latest attempt of Msgr. 
de Roo to rehabilitate this Borgia Pope. In the In- 
troduction of the first edition of this third volume 
(1895) he said: “It may be safely stated that in 
future attempts to rehabilitate Alexander will prove 
futile.” In the introduction to the seventh edition 
(1924) he declared: ‘“‘ The literature on the sub- 
jects of this volume grew to such an extent that 
nearly every page had to be altered. Also the ‘ Ap- 
pendix ’ was increased considerably. I had the good 
fortune of finding a remnant of the correspondence 
of Alexander VI of the years 1493 and 14094 in the 
papal secret archives. The most important forty- 
four documents are printed in the Appendix No. 
56. They do not change the picture drawn, they 
only bring out the lines better. These documents 
will make apologies of the Borgia pope as they have 
lately been attempted again in Italy and Spain as 
impossible as the picture which a Milanese writer 
drew became a caricature.” 

Some writers have compared this history to a 
mosaic put together with modern tools, others with 
a musical composition of an old master played by 
a modern virtuoso on an organ fitted out with the 
best appliances which are only possible through the 
use of electricity. The documents, many of them 
printed for the first time, are his spokesmen, the 
standard verdicts of Fachmaenner no matter to what 
religious tendency they belong, serve as his guides 
in the printed material and his own genius breathes 


% 


392 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


life into these dry facts. Thus the reader becomes 
not only acquainted with the development of the 
stirring events of those times, but he lives, as it 
were, in the very atmosphere of the period. This is 
the characteristic mark of Pastor’s History of the 
Popes. It distinguishes it from every other that deals 
with the same subject. It is a “ Kulturgeschichte ” 
of the Fifteenth and the Sixteenth Century with the 
papacy as the foremost power in shaping these times 
for better or for worse. 

Various factors contributed to make it such a 
unique history of the Church of these centuries. 

It is true no other modern historian had as many 
advantages for such a history as Pastor. As a sincere 
Catholic the very purpose of the Church was con- 
stantly before his eyes. In theological questions he 
consulted theologians of renown, Catholic or non- 
Catholic. Thus in the formula of faith of Cardinal 
Contarini (1541) Dr. John Heinrich of Mainz de- 
clared in favor of its orthodoxy. In medical difficul- 
ties he asked the opinions of eminent doctors, even 
the best specialists, as may be seen in the dispute 
on the death of Pope Alexander VI (Vol. III, rst 
part, 588-595). He received a thorough scientific 
training from men who are recognized as masters 
in their branch of history and who acknowledged 
his abilities by various documents. He found friends 
that communicated, like F. X. Kraus, the art critic, 
in an unselfish manner the result of their painstak- 
ing investigations in a particular field of their avo- 
cation. He was granted greater liberty than any 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 393 


other man in the use of documents and papers. He 
has lived a long life—-may God spare him many 
more years! — and he could work with an energy 
which may be called “ Pastorian.” He has such a 
sure historic sense that Msgr. Dr. Ehses, the re- 
nowned co-editor of the monumental Concilium 
Tridentinum, declared in the Historisches Jahrbuch, 
1920: “ As the author had to rely on the Acts of the 
Council as edited by Aug. Theiner, so far the best, 
but in many ways incomplete and incorrect, the 
Volumes VIII and IX of the Concilium Tridentinum 
will be of great help for future editions. Neverthe- 
less independently of these Pastor gave in the last 
section of the sixth chapter a verdict about the re- 
sult and the consequences of the Council which for 
its brevity, its directness and its delicacy in expres- 
sion can hardly be surpassed.” But above every- 
thing else Pastor is honest in every fibre of his heart 
and even the most exacting critics never denied 
this. 

Thus under such favorable conditions and with 
such magnanimous cooperation he could constantly 
improve and even recast entire editions —each one 
contains the latest discoveries in documentary evi- 
dences, brings the most recent literature on the 
questions involved and shows constant improve- 
ment of style which is now nearly epic in the de- 
scription of those times. 

The beginning of the History of the Popes can be 
traced back to the year 1876 when he wrote for the 
Katholik, then one of the leading Catholic Reviews 


394 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


of Germany, the monograph, Neue Quellenberichte 
ueber den Reformator Albrecht von Brandenburg. 
In 1874 the famous Scriptores Rerum Prussi- 
carum in five volumes were published and naturally 
attracted the attention of the historians. Our author 
gave his verdict in the above mentioned article. 
First he examined the documents critically and 
found them genuine. Then he expressed his satis- 
faction at the impartiality of the editors, especially 
Dr. Toepper. Thirdly he declared that some of 
these documents, notably the description of the times 
by Gregor Spiess and the Relatio of Philip Creutz, 
were of extraordinary value for that critical period 
of the history of Prussia. Finally he made use of 
them in a truly scientific manner. It is evident from 
Dr. Janssen’s letters, that his teacher stood spon- 
sor to this first literary effort of Pastor. Even 
without these letters the very style of the article 
shows the influence of the master. But there is some- 
thing in the work that reveals already the future ex- 
pert in historical research. It is his fearless deter- 
mination to let the documents alone speak, no matter 
whether they oppose his own views that he had so 
far, or whether they contradict the theories of other 
historians or the opinions of the people in general. 
Thus with all reverence to Ranke the “ Altmeister ” 
of history in Germany at that time, he declared that 
the latter had omitted facts to idealize Albrecht von 
Brandenburg. Likewise he probably shocked some 
pious souls by stating that the bishops of that terri- 
tory, Erhart Queis of Pomesenia and George Polenz 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 395 


of Samland, were even more responsible for the reli- 
gious change of that territory than Albrecht, the 
grand master. He became so convinced of the force 
of these documents that he ended the article with 
the words: “ We can see what the consequences of 
the bad example of these Bishops were. It proves 
that the Reformation succeeded, where the Bishops 
apostatized and it failed, where they remained 
firm, for the bishops are the columns of the 
Church.” 

This courageous standpoint of Pastor is still more 
evident in his first book: Die Reunionsbestrebungen 
waehrend der Regierung Karls V. 

In 1878 he had written his doctor-thesis on this 
same subject. In 1879 he revised and deepened it for 
publication in book form. The literary critic of the 
Literarische Handweiser of that year called it the 
best and, with the exception of one rather mediocre 
work on the same subject, the first book which treats 
of this phase of Reformation in Germany. According 
to this same writer Dr. Pastor proved by documen- 
tary evidence that Charles V, the Roman prelates 
and Melanchthon made honest efforts, to reéstablish 
(after the Diet of Worms (1521)) religious unity, 
but that the selfish aims of the Protestant princes, 
the intrigues of Francis I of France, the cowardice of 
several bishops and the petty policy of the dukes 
of Bavaria stood in the way of reconciliation of the 
two parties. Our critic also agrees with him that 
the success of the German Reformation was not due 
to any change of faith or morals in the country but 


3096 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


to the change of jurisdiction. Both say that many 
churchmen preferred submission to secular princes 
to obedience towards the Pope and consequently 
these princes who had usurped the papal power in 
this respect became the main obstacles of reunion. 
Even writers who disagreed with Pastor on several 
of these points were unanimous that the book was 
a very valuable contribution to the history of the 
Reformation on account of its scholarly criticism, 
its excellent style and its wealth of original docu- 
ments. Without doubt many of the readers felt what 
the critic in the Katholik wrote: ‘‘ We expect that 
Pastor will accomplish much in the historical field 
in the near future. He has the talents and the zeal, 
may God give him the necessary strength.” 

When the Unionsbestrebungen came from the 
press Pastor was working feverishly in Rome to 
gather the material for his History of the Popes. 
How his heart must have ached when he saw that 
after he had been granted the personal privilege 
of exploiting the secret papal archives even his sheer 
inexhaustive energy or the abilities of any individual 
historian were utterly insufficient for the task of 
transcribing all this vast material for historical in- 
quiry. It was during that time that he suffered a 
nervous breakdown. In this state of mind, even be- 
fore others were granted similar privileges, he ap- 
pealed to the historians of the world at large to come 
to Rome and help to gather those historical treas- 
ures. He expressed this in a criticism of the Spicile- 
gium Ossoriense of Bishop, later Cardinal, Patrick 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 3907 


Moran, in the following words: ‘‘ The historical ma- 
terial stored up in the archives and the libraries of 
Rome is so vast that its complete publication and 
proper use is impossible for any individual person. 
Only by a division of this work anything of impor- 
tance can be achieved. Let therefore every nation 
collect its own documents from this source. This will 
be a sure means of advancing historical science. 
English scholars have already started by a good ex- 
ample. By this I do not refer to the great collection 
of documents which the English government made 
here and to which the Vatican archives contributed 
much valuable material. On the contrary I have in 
mind the private research work which individual his- 
torians of that nation undertook and these individual 
efforts deserve indeed the praise of all their col- 
leagues.” 

Finally, after such long and painstaking prepara- 
tions, the first volume of the History of the Popes 
at the Close of the Middle Ages (Die Geschichte 
der Paepste seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters) was 
published (1886). The author had planned to write 
the history of the Church from the Fifteenth Cen- 
tury to the present day in six volumes. But the very 
first volume showed that, considering the vast mate- 
rial on hand, this was impossible. In this book he 
described the Renaissance in the Introduction, the 
Avignon period and the Great Western Schism in 
the first chapter and the pontificates of Martin V, 
Eugene IV, Nicholas V and Callistus III in three 
other chapters. 


398 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


In his preface he gave the main reasons for the 
publication of such a work. He declared that scien- 
tific histories of the oldest and still vigorous dynasty 
were scarce, that lately many new treatises had been 
written, which change the verdicts of older authors, 
finally that the discovery of important documents 
in the secret papal archives which had been made 
accessible through the generosity of Pope Leo XIII 
made such a work imperative. | 

It is only too true that up to the time of Pastor 
no Catholic had written a standard work on this 
great subject. Thus the lack of such a history of 
the Popes and the manner in which he fulfilled this 
task made him famous at once. Especially his friends 
in Germany were jubilant when, with very few ex- 
ceptions, all historians hailed his Papstgeschichte as 
a most valuable contribution to historical science. 

His former teacher, Msgr. Dr. Janssen, expressed 
this in a criticism in the Historisches Jahrbuch: 
‘“Pastor’s History of the Popes has been received 
very favorably by Catholic and Protestant scholars. 
Its merits are particularly the large number of origi- 
nal documents which the author gathered from more 
than a hundred archives of Italy, France, Belgium, 
Austria, Germany and Switzerland. He also made 
use of all the printed sources now available and of 
the latest monographs on the subjects treated in 
this work. The wealth of the historical material, 
so far unequalled in any other history, has enabled 
him to throw new light on a number of disputed 
questions and to correct statements made by Burck- 





LUDWIG VON PASTOR 399 


hardt, Droysen, Haas, Gregorovius, Muentz, Voigt 
and others.” 

Purely literary reviews and Protestant theologi- 
cal journals were not far behind this verdict in their 
praises. The critic in the Zarnecksche Literarische 
Zentralblatt wrote almost at the same time: ‘“ The 
author of the Papstgeschichte is a Catholic and he 
never hides his religious tendency. But this belief 
in no wise clouds his historic views. Honestly he is 
always seeking to be just to phenomena and to per- 
sons, though he cannot approve the act itself or the 
intention of the actor. Indeed this religious con- 
viction enables him in many ways to give a truer 
picture of those conditions than would have been 
possible for a non-Catholic scholar.” In a similar 
manner Pflugk-Harttung said in the Jllustrierte 
Rundschau: “ Never before has material of such 
abundance been brought together and made use of 
in such a way that the unbiased Protestant can fully 
rely on its deductions.” Dr. Paul Ewald in the 
Deutsche Literaturzeitung called it ‘“‘a monumen- 
tal work that far surpasses all other treatises 
on the history of the Church between 1447 and 
1458.” 

In France M. Ulysse Chevalier, in the Revue 
Critique, described it as “‘ the result of immense in- 
vestigations, destined to obliterate (effacer) similar 
works of the French authors André and Chris- 
tophe”’; and when the translation of this first 
volume into French appeared, the Polybiblion an- 
nounced: “L’histoire des Papes, par M. le doc- 


400 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


teur Louis Pastor, a été accueillie dans le monde 
savant avec le plus grand faveur.”’ 

In Italy, the Archivio storico Italiano pronounced 
it ‘‘as objective as possible, a most valuable con- 
tribution to documentary collections and conserva- 
tive in its criticism.” | 

Considering all these favorable comments from 
such diverse sources the silence of the representa- 
tive English journals of that period is very ominous. 
Nor was this only by chance or oversight. The first 
criticism appeared only after the second volume of 
the history came from the press. This was written 
by Dr. B. Garnett. We marvel today how it was 
possible that a critic of a journal to which J. Gaird- 
ner and Lord Acton contributed could say in 1880: 
‘“‘ Pastor made no remarkable additions to our pre- 
vious knowledge. He endeavours to steer a middle 
course and flatters himself that he is impartial while 
he is only cautious. Of direct misrepresentation or 
even disingenuous suppression he is indeed inca- 
pable, but he cannot resist the temptation, even 
more subtly destructive of truth, to minimize the 
picturesqueness and the moral teaching of history. 
. . . Professor Pastor never falsifies history; but he 
leaves the significance of its more pregnant pas- 
Sages unrecognized as the Alpine traveller hastens 
in silence by the suspended avalanche which might 
be loosened by his breath. . . . The higher we esti- 
mate P. Pastor’s superiority to the Audins and 
Artauds — and it is indeed difficult to overrate it 
— the more evident it becomes that philosophical 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 4o1 


history is not to be expected from devout Roman 
Catholics.” 

Even after the third volume was_ published 
(1895) and when the renown of our historian had 
spread especially on account of the now famous 
chapters on the pontificate of Alexander VI, the 
same writer still declared (XII, 1897): “ Either he 
has braced himself by a special effort to discharge 
a specially difficult obligation or working as he has 
been for some years with the eyes of historical criti- 
cism upon him, he has insensibly imbibed more 
liberal sympathy. Indeed, setting aside the peculiar 
attitude of mind which absolutely is impossible for 
a sincere believer in the claims of the Roman 
Church to discard, his volume wants little essential 
to the character of a really scientific and impartial 
history ”; and again: “It is the work of an advo- 
cate — a courageous advocate, no doubt, so con- 
vinced of the soundness of his cause that he does 
not mind making damaging admissions — but still 
an advocate. The scroll is waved in the hand, but 
the brief peeps out of the pocket.” But even such 
an adverse critic could not deny “his diligence in 
investigating every available source of information 
from the Archives of the Vatican to the latest 
studies in modern Reviews, his perfect fairness in 
citation and the highly intelligent use made of his 
materials.”’ Without doubt these two criticisms of 
Dr. Garnett contributed in no small measure to the 
fact that Pastor’s history was for a long time little 
appreciated in the English world of letters. It came 


402 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


only in r910 that J. P. Whitney, in the same Re- 
view, Vol. XXV, accorded Pastor the recognition 
which he deserves. He first called attention to quali- 
ties which are now expected of an historian: “ ful- 
ness of detail always under perfect control, com- 
mand of the literature down to the latest discussions 
and skilful use of much unprinted material,” and he 
grants to the work in question all of them in a 
high degree. Then he wrote: “‘ But if the history 
is to be coherent, a point of view of the whole area 
must be found and the papal court has peculiar ad- 
vantages for such a choice. ... As regards the 
representation of the inner workings of the papal 
court, the work stands alone. The conclaves are des- 
cribed in detail, and of course with use of the best 
material; likewise the creations of Cardinals for the 
first time is fully and fairly pictured. What has been 
often brought before us in the shape of general state- 
ments or of detailed sketches of single situations is 
given here in a continuous history, based on full use 
of all existing material. . . . The spiritual impor- 
tance of the papal position is always insisted upon. 
We cannot judge a pope even mainly as politicians 
or statesmen of their day. Critics and admirers of 
Creighton’s Papacy have rightly found in him a lack 
of this needed moral judgment. The same lack is not 
found in Pastor’s popes. Leo X, Paul III, etc., are 
all tried by the highest conception of what a pope 
should be. Creighton was writing when, for an Eng- 
lish public at any rate, a fairer judgment of bygone 
popes was to be sought; he was conscientiously seek- 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 403 


ing after this and therefore laid stress on the politi- 
cal needs of the papacy and the moral tone as a pal- 
liative of much that was bad. Dr. Pastor, on the 
other hand, starts with the full conception of what 
the highest responsibilities of the popes were: their 
religious ideals and endeavours, their political suc- 
cess, their social influence, all are judged as parts of 
a whole: they themselves are estimated by the ideal 
of their office and not by the lower conception of the 
day. This seems the truer method and it certainly 
gives us the more complete picture. It is possible to 
lay down Creighton and say about any given pope of 
whom we have been reading ‘that is all true, but 
after all what was he as pope?’ We do not think 
that any reader of Dr. Pastor’s would need ask 
the question, for he would find it answered as he 
read.” 

Such a comparison of Creighton and Pastor was 
quite natural for English writers for both wrote 
almost at the same time on the same subject. But 
almost invariably the greater talents and more thor- 
ough researches of Pastor are conceded. Dr. George 
L. Burr refers to them in the first volume of the 
American Historical Review in the following words: 
“Side by side with the Catholic historian an emi- 
nent Anglican scholar has grappled with the same 
theme and the volumes of Creighton have a few 
years the start. Those dealing with this period de- 
vote to it somewhat less than half the space of the 
German volume. For grasp and lucidity, for insight 
and fairness, the English scholar has nothing to 


404 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


fear from this comparison; and it should be to him 
a matter of pride that the German, with all his fresh 
sources, has found so little to correct or to add. It 
is clear on the other hand, how much he constantly 
owes to the English writer’s suggestions. But if 
Bishop Creighton’s is the more statesmanly eye, 
the more picturesque pencil, the more terse and 
virile exposition, the more luminous consciousness 
of the general politics of Europe, Dr. Pastor’s is 
yet the surer, the warmer, the subtler touch. And 
though the Englishman draws more largely on the 
gossip of Infessura, of Burckhardt, of Paris de 
Grassis, while the more cautious German ignores 
many a good story which he cannot prove, the lat- 
ter is often the more conservative of the two.” Then 
our critic calls attention to the results of both schol- 
ars as regards Pope Alexander and Friar Savonarola 
and ends with the following words: “ That in the 
search of truth, two scholars so severed by religious 
environment should have reached such agreement, 
in such a field, is one of the encouraging things of 
modern historical research; and the generous policy 
of pope Leo XIII could hardly ask a better proof 
that the defenders of the Church have nothing to 
fear.” 

This may seem a fair estimate of our historian to 
the average reader. But what are the facts in the 
case measured from the standpoint of history itself 
and interpreted by the best critic which the Eng- 
lish world had at the time when the works of these 
two writers appeared side by side? History is above 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 405 


everything else an exact science and as regards this 
how do the two historians compare? 

Creighton says in his Introduction: “ The circum- 
stances of my life have not allowed me to make 
much research for new authorities which in so large 
a field would have been impossible. What I have 
found in manuscripts was not of much importance. 
My work has been done under difficulties which 
necessarily attend one who lives far from great 
libraries and to whom study is the occupation 
of leisure hours and not the main objective in 
life.” 

Pastor tells us, in the Introduction to his first vol- 
ume, that he examined all the archives that were ac- 
cessible. His tireless work and fearless disposition in 
this research can be seen in a special way from 
his dealings with the Holy Office of the Inquisition. 
He describes this in his introduction to the Allge- 
meine Dekrete der Roemischen Inquisition. In 
1901, he says, when he was preparing his work on 
Paul III he made the first efforts to get access to 
the archives of this Congregation. After several ap- 
peals extending over a period of fourteen months 
and asking only for the court records in the trials 
for heresy during that pontificate he received the 
answer that these records were lost and that only 
the decrees of the Congregation for this same period 
were extant. As this reply put restrictions on his 
description of the pontificate of Paul III he wrote 
in the fifth volume of his History: “If the present 
Congregation of the Holy Office still persists in 


406 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


maintaining a system of absolute secrecy which has 
almost universally been abandoned elsewhere, with 
regard to historical documents now three hundred 
years old, it inflicts an injury not only on the work 
of the historian, but still more on itself, since it 
thus perpetuates belief in all and in the worst of 
all the innumerable charges levelled at the Inquisi- 
tion.” (Transl. Engl. Ed. 1914.) A European corre- 
spondent in the Fortnightly Review defended this 
policy and the editor of the Review approved the 
policy and determination of Pastor with the follow- 
ing words, January, 1910: “‘We do not deny that 
there is some weight in the considerations (viz.: that 
the archives contain much of a private nature) but 
to our mind they fail to justify such a strict adhesion 
to the policy of secrecy as that from which Dr. 
Pastor has been made to suffer.” 

When this complaint brought no change in the at- 
titude of the officials the author tried to supply this 
want of material from other sources. At first he be- 
lieved that the papal secret archives would have the 
material which he sought. He found in the Armarium 
Xa number of volumes which contained Acts of the 
Inquisition, but the ones he needed were missing. He 
made inquiries in the Roman State Archives and 
discovered four codices which had sources for his 
purpose. In 1902 at an auction sale he bought an- 
other codex which contained a few decrees of the 
Inquisition which had so far not been published. 
He examined the private archives of Roman fami- 
lies whose members were now and then officials of 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 407 


this Tribunal and especially the Barberini Collec- 
tion of manuscripts yielded a rich harvest. Finally 
he used a rare printed book of Cardinal Albizzi (a 
copy of which is, according to Prof. G. L. Burr, in 
the Cornell Library) and published the above 
named Decreta Generalia Sancti Officit. 

Thus who of these two is the truer historian? 
Lord Acton in his criticism of Creighton says: 
“Owing to the economy of evidence and the sever- 
ity with which the raw material is repressed and 
kept out of sight the author prefers the larger 
public that takes history in the shape of literature, 
to scholars whose souls are vexed with the insolu- 
bility of problems and who get their meals in the 
kitchen.” And again: “It is by the spirit and not 
the letter that this work will live.” 

On the other hand Lord Acton as well as Car- 
dinal Newman was very enthusiastic about Pastor’s 
first volume and the latter took active part in the 
translation of the same into English. In short Creigh- 
ton’s history belongs more to the realm of literature, 
while Pastor’s history is a scientific work. 

The most frequent comparison, however, was 
made between Louis von Pastor and Leopold von 
Ranke. 

Pope Leo XIII referred to Ranke’s work when he 
opened the secret archives to the historians of the 
world. Dr. Paul de Nolhac wrote in the Revue Cri- 
tique (1889): “Son libre (est c’est le plus bel éloge 
qu’on quisse faire) mérite d’étre comparé a celui de 
Ranke,” and a few years later the literary critic in 


408 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


the Polybiblion (1892) called him already “ lérudit 
émulé de Ranke.” 

For German writers who looked upon Ranke as a 
superman in history such a comparison was in the 
beginning little short of iconoclastic. The Encyclo- 
pedia Britannica (1911) says: “‘ At the time of his 
death [23 May, 1886] Ranke was not in his country 
alone, but generally regarded as the first modern his- 
torian, the leader of modern historians.” During 
that very year (1886) Pastor published his first vol- 
ume. One of the first who made such a comparison 
in Germany and in favor of Pastor was Fr. A. Baum- 
garten, S. J. He declared in the Stzmmen: “ Neither 
Macaulay nor Ranke gave a satisfactory answer why 
so many millions left the Church during the six- 
teenth century. It is indeed true Ranke did not, like 
the first reformers in their first anger, look upon the 
papacy as an institution of Antichrist. He valued it 
only as a great political power which contributed 
much to the progress of the world. Still it is for him, 
merely a government founded on the quicksands of 
deception. In a similar manner Macaulay calls it 
a great civilizing agent. Pastor proves or corrects 
these statements and adds another most essential 
point: the spirituality of the papacy. Thus we get 
a more complete picture of that entire period.” To 
this we may add from Federer’s Ueber Pastors 
Papstgeschichte: ‘‘'This is the main cause why this 
history even by describing the failings of popes, 
churchmen and people of the period more exactly 
than other works never scandalizes the reader pro- 


f 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 409 


vided the faults are not taken from the context as 
several writers hostile to the Church have done.” 
The author himself indicates this in a number of 
his mottoes, especially that of the third volume: 
‘Petri dignitas etiam in indigno herede non defi- 
cit.’ In this way his character descriptions of popes 
have been compared to those of the Bible. 

To make a just comparison between Ranke and 
Pastor we must inquire into the aims and the means 
of each one in the writing of their history of the 
popes. There is no doubt that both showed extraor- 
dinary talents for historical research. Considering 
purely the resources Ranke was perhaps the more 
gifted owing to a special “historic sense’ which 
led him to surmise facts and causes which he could 
not deduce from the documents at his disposal. In 
this way Pastor was often the first to prove with 
documents the statements of his great predecessor. 
This accounts for the opinions of some critics that 
Pastor added nothing to our knowledge of those 
facts, while we should rather say that he proved the 
surmises of other historians by his evidences and 
thus really added the most essential in historical 
investigations, the surety of the facts. Therefore 
Dr. George L. Burr well says: “‘Where Ranke 
could but divine, touching only high points of his 
sweep, Pastor establishes the solid proofs or dis- 
credits their absence. The reader has the rare satis- 
faction of feeling that he has in his hand a definite 
study. . . . His volumes are of inestimable worth 
to men of every faith.” 


410 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


When Ranke published his history (1834-1836), 
says J. A. Mooney in the American Catholic Quar- 
terly Review (1889), “‘it was a rarely good book, 
a surprise to all Protestants of all denominations 
who had been brought up on a literature of fables 
and abuse, and a greater surprise to Catholics who 
patiently had reached the conclusion that Luther 
and the princes had knifed truth beyond the hope 
of recovery.” This book (as mentioned above) 
given by Janssen to his favorite disciple had been 
an inspiration for Pastor and he frequently referred 
to its author as the greatest of Protestant historians. 
But Ranke had no access to the secret archives of 
the Popes. Pastor enjoyed in this respect more privi- 
leges than any other man. And what is a history of 
the popes without these documents? 

Ranke gives the proof of this statement himself 
in his Introduction in the following words: “ It will 
be obvious that Rome alone could supply those ma- 
terials. But was it to be expected that a foreigner 
and one professing a different faith would there be 
permitted to have free access to collections for the 
purpose of revealing the secrets of the papacy? 
This would not perhaps have been so ill-advised, as 
it may appear, since no search can bring to light 
anything worse than what is already assumed by 
conjecture and received by the world as established 
truth. But I cannot boast of having had such per- 
mission. I was enabled to take cognizance of the 
treasures contained in the Vatican and to use a 
number of volumes suited to my purpose; but the 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR AIl 


freedom of access which I could have wished was 
by no means accorded.” 

On the contrary Pastor, in his Introduction, 
shows that the main, although by no means the 
only sources of his history are these very docu- 
ments. He refers to them on many pages giving the 
exact references in his “ Notes.” His now famous 
‘“‘ Appendices ” have become veritable archival de- 
positaries for students and in 1912 he began a spe- 
cial publication of such documents which he could 
not conveniently incorporate into his history. 

How his critics watched for every flaw in these 
‘‘ Appendices ” may be seen from the twelfth volume 
of the English Historical Review (1897). 

In the Appendix to the third volume (1895) 
Pastor published a circular letter of pope Julius II 
to king Henry VII of England calling for contribu- 
tions to the building of St. Peter’s. The Latin docu- 
ment (goa) contained the names of a number of 
bishops and noblemen of England and were written 
by an Italian scribe. Our historian in a number of 
“Notes ” suggested several translations of these 
Latin titles. As he was not quite certain he prefixed 
each one with the German phrase “ vielleicht.”’ The 
first critic of this interpretation was Dr. Garnett, 
who corrected a number of them on page 562. The 
next critic, Dr. J. Gairdner, corrected a number of 
the corrections of Dr. Garnett on page 762. Finally 
Dr. Pastor in his next edition (1924) referred to 
both critics without comment and accepted their 
interpretations, giving as usual the exact references. 


412 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


(The English translation of 1914 has still the Pas- 
torian interpretation of 1895.) | 

Thus, while Ranke never changed his text even 
after fifty years had intervened between his first 
edition and his seventh, Pastor not only kept all his 
editions abreast with the latest investigations, but 
also as a true scientist he opened new paths for in- 
vestigation. This may be seen in his remarks on the 
biographies of Pope Pius V (Vol. VIII, App.). 
After enumerating the twenty-six principal biog- 
raphies of this last canonized saint on the throne 
of St. Peter he concludes: ‘“‘ Thus there is no want 
of biographies, but there was still a rich harvest of 
original sources in the archives to present a strictly 
historical-critical picture in which the personality of 
Pius V appears more marked than in the usual eulo- 
gies.”” And in a “ Note” to this statement he added: 
‘In this question I can only remind the reader that 
years ago I wrote: It is high time that the Roccoco 
period of ‘ Lives of the Saints’ be ended. They do 
not need pious inventions; they can bear the sun- 
light of historical inquiry, they only gain thereby.” 
To prove this statement he wrote in 1924 “ Char- 
acter Sketches of Catholic Reformers of the Six- 
teenth Century.” This up-to-date literature is one of 
the most prominent exterior qualities of Pastor’s His- 
tory of the Popes and it has created a school of his- 
torians. The spirit of these followers can be seen in a 
criticism written by one of them for the Historische- 
Politische Blaetter in 1903: ‘‘ Many historians have 
been accused of neglecting the practical side of 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 413 


historical composition. They believe themselves free 
from the laws of historical methods, especially 
by disregarding the improvement of their works 
by new editions. The best book can in this way 
become useless. This was one of Ranke’s faults. 
His new editions were merely reprints of the old. 
His history of the popes has on this account lost its 
importance. Today some parts have value only from 
a literary-historical standpoint. No matter how per- 
fect a work, how gifted an author may be, whoso- 
ever believes in a progress of historical science can 
never be satisfied with the relative perfection of a 
work, he must give a certain elasticity to such lit- 
erary productions that lay claim to more than ordi- 
nary value. If those who seek real information must 
constantly ask themselves whether a certain state- 
ment has not perhaps been changed by special stud- 
ies they will follow such an author only with a cer- 
tain distrust. Nobody can demand that a reader 
examine and correct these changes. This is the duty 
of the author and his successors. Indeed, this is a 
very onerous task. Pastor has not only created such 
an opus magnum et perenne but he is also constantly 
perfecting it. He is the last to be satisfied with it. 
He knows that the field of history is so vast that not 
the most talented historian nor even a generation 
can exhaust it.” 


414 CHURCH HISTORIANS 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


A. BIOGRAPHY 


Katholische Reformatoren. Gedenkwort von Dr. Max 
Scherman. | 

Ludwig von Pastor, der geschichtschreiber der Paepste, 
denkschrift zum 4o. Jahrestag des erstmaligen Er- 
scheinens der Geschichte der Paepste (1926). 

Pastor, Ludwig von, in the Historische-Politische Blaetter 
(1914). 

Pastor, Ludwig von, in the Herders Konversations Lexi- 
kon. 


B. GENERAL WORKS ON PASTOR 
AND HIS WRITINGS 


Apart from the works listed above the main sources 
for a critical estimate of Pastor’s historical writings must 
be sought in the current reviews. The following list of 
Pastor’s major works will orientate the reader in his 
search for critical evaluation of the great historian’s 
career: 


Die kirchlichen Reunionsbestrebungen waehrend der Re- 
gierung Karls V. (1879). 

Die korrespondenz des Kardinals Contarini waehrend 
seiner deutschen Legation 1541 (1880). 

Geschichte der Paepste seit dem Ausgange des Mittelal- 
ters. (10 Vol. 1886-1926.) | 

Johannes Janssen, ein Lebensbild. (1892). 

Janssen-Pastors Geschichte des deutschen Volkes seit 
dem Ausgang des Mittelalters. (8 Vol. 1893-1926.) 

Johannes Janssen, ein zweites Wort an meine Kritiker. 
(1895). Zur Beurteilung Savonarolas. (1898). 

August Reichensperger. 2 Vol. (1899). 


LUDWIG VON PASTOR 415 


Ungedruckte Akten zur Geschichte der Paepste. (1904). 

Die Reise des Kardinals Luige d’Aragona 1517. (1904). 

Le biblioteche private e specialmente quelle delle familie 
principesche di Roma. (1906). 

Johannes Janssen, Friedrich Graf von Stolberg. (4th ed.) 
IQIO. 

Allgemeine Dekrete der Roemischen Inquisition aus den 
Jahren 1555-1597. (1912). 

Leben des Freiherrn Max von Gagern. (1912). 

Eine ungedruckte Beschreibung der Reichsstadt Aachen 
aus dem Jahre 1561. (1914). 

Die Stadt Rom zu Ende der Renaissance. (1916). 

Conrad von Hoetzendorf. (1916). 

Generaloberst Viktor Dankl. (1916). 

Johannes Janssens Briefe. 2 Vol. (1920). 

Stiftspropst Dr. Franz Kaufmann. (1921). 

Katholische Reformatoren. (1924). 

Die Fresken in der Sixtinischen Kapelle. (1925). 


FINIS 





INDEX 


ApoaR, King, 179. 

Acta Sanctorum, 193, 195, 190, 
206, 209; sources of, 197; 
and modern historiography, 
204. 

Acta SS. O5S.B. 
22%. 

Acton, Lord, on Creighton, 407. 

Acts of the Marytrs, 17. 

Ad Orosium (St. Augustine), 
38. 

Africanus, 13. 

Agapius, Bishop of Caesarea, 


(Mabillon) , 


4. 

Alaric, 59. 

Albinus, Abbot, 85. 

Albrecht of Brandenburg, 394. 

Alcuin, 92. 

Alexander, Bishop of Alexan- 
dria, 6. 

Alexander VI, Pastor on, 389, 
4Ol. 

Alexandria, School of, 4. 


Ambrosian Library (Milan), 
213. 
American Catholic Historical 


Association, iii, vi. 
American Catholic Quarterly 
Review, 353, 410. 
American Historical Review, 
353. 
American Revolution, political 
philosophy of, 132. 
Analecta Bollandiana, 196, 203. 
Anastasius (Moehler), 242. 
Anecdota Graeca (Muratori), 
216. 


Anecdota Latina (Muratori), 
212. 

Anglo-Saxons, conversion of, 
71; and Britons, 80. 

Ann Arbor, meeting (1925), iii. 

Annales Ecclesiastici (Baronius) , 
153. 

Annali d’Italia (Muratori), 232. 

Annals (Baronius), 159, 164, 
166, 167; critical value of, 
175; Fueter on, 176; errors 
in, 177; and the Centuries, 
180, 192. 

Annual Meetings, Amer. Cath. 
Hist. Assoc., iii. 

Anselm of Canterbury (Moeh- 
ler), 270. 

Ante-Nicene Church, tro. 

Anti-infallibilists, 311. 

Anti-Janus (Hergenroether), 
307. 

Antioch, synod (324), 6. 

Antichita Estensi (Muratori), 
217. 

Antiphonary, of Bangor, 214. 

Antiquities (Lingard), 282. 


Apologética Historia (Las 
Casas), 145. 

Apology for Origen (Euse- 
bius), 5. 

Apostle of the Indies (Las 
Casas), 130. 


Archiv fuer Literatur und Kir- 
chengeschichte, 364, 365. 

Archives, Vatican, 380; of In- 
quisition, 405. 

Archivio Muratoriano, 229. 


417 


418 


Archivio storico Italiano, 400. 

Argelati, Filippo, 226. 

Arian Visigoths, 37. 

Arianism, and Eusebius, 6; of 
Goths, 56. 

Arnulph, 112. 

Aschbach, 327. 

Assemani, 192. 

Association, American Catholic 
Historical, purpose of, v-vi. 

Athanasius (Moehler), 261. 

Athaulf, 53. 

Attila, 55. 

Austrian Historical 
(Rome), 383. 

Avitus, 38, 40. 


Institute 


Baso, Cesare, 227. 

Baldric, Archbishop of Dol, 118. 

Baluze, 223. 

Balzani, U., 230. 

Bandelier, on Las Casas, 129, 
142. 

Bangor antiphonary, 214. 

Baptism of Constantine, 207. 

Barbarian invasions, purpose of, 
56. 

Bardenhewer, 26. 

BARONIUS (Plassman), 153- 
189. 

Baronius, 78; father of modern 


Church history, 153; life 
of, 154; education, 156; 
historical training, 158; 


Superior of Oratorians, 164; 
Cardinal, 164; Archivist of 
Vatican, 165; Venerable, 
166; writings of, 166; style, 
170; historical method, 
171-178. 

“ Baronius coquus perpetuus,” 
163. 

Baumgartner, A., S.J., 340. 

Baur, F. C., 243. 

Bec, School of, 106. 


INDEX 


BEDE, vide St. Bede The Ven- 
erable. 

Bellarmine, 264. 

Benedict XIV, 166, 218, 227. 

Benedictine historians, 192. 

Benedictines of Saint-Maur, 
124. 

BETTEN, Francis S., S.J., St. 
Bede the Venerable, 71-00. 

Bianchini, 2109. 

Bible, commentaries on (Bede), 


74. 
Biblical studies (Bede), 75. 
Bibliography: Eusebius, 26; 


Orosius, 67; Bede, 08; 
Ordericus Vitalis, 125; Las 
Casas, 151; Baronius, 187; 
Bollandus, 210; Muratori, 
239; Moehler, 276; Lin- 
gard, 288; Hergenroether, 
319; Janssen, 352; Denifile, 
372; Pastor, 414. 

Biographical sources: Eusebius, 
26; Orosius, 67; Bede, 98; 
Ordericus Vitalis, 125; Las 
Casas, 151; Baronius, 187; 
Bollandus, 210; Muratori, 
239; Moehler, 276; Lin- 
gard, 288; Hergenroether, 
319; Janssen, 352; Denifle, 
372; Pastor, 414. 

Biography, Muratori’s contri- 
butions to, 215. 

Blondus, School of, 177. 

Bobbio, 214. 

Boehmer, Fred., 335. 

Boehmer, and Janssen, 328. 

Bollandist hagiology, 223. 

Bollandists, 192; historical 
method, 195; destruction of 
library of, 201; and modern 
historiography, 20 4-206 ; 
and tradition, 208. 

BOLLANDUS- (Mannhardt), 
190-211. 


INDEX 


Bollandus, criticism of, 199. 

Bonn, Univ. of, 326. 

Borghini, Vicenzo, 222. 

Borromeo, Count Carlo, 213. 

Borromeo, Card. Fred., 170. 

Bosco, Don, 237. 

Bossuet, Discourse, 61, 265. 

Boswell, James, 30. 

Brazil, 131. 

Brevissima relacion (Las Casas), 
145. 

Britons, and Anglo-Saxons, 8o. 

Burr, G. L., on Pastor, 403, 
407. 

Bzovius, A., 354. 


CADWALLA, 80. 

Calendar, Gregorian reform of, 
"8. . 

Cambridge History of English 
Literature, 287. 
Cambridge University, and 
Denifle, and Ehrle, 371. 
Campori, M., letters of Mura- 
tori, 233, 238. 

Canisius, 191. 

Canon, Muratorian, 214. 

Capecelatro, 160, 169. 

Capital punishment, Muratori 
on, 210. 

Carducci, 222. 

Carmelite legend, and Pape- 
broch, 207. 

Carthage, and Rome, 58. 

Casaubon, 176. 

Cassiodorus, 05, 96. 

Catholic Church and Christian 
State (Hergenroether), 310. 

Catholic Encyclopedia, 129, 142, 
310. 

Catholic Historical Review, 196, 
389. 

Catholic historiography, 192. 

Catholic history, in the Cen- 
turie€s, 158. 


419 


“Catholica non leguntur,” 
339. 
Catholics in England, nine- 


teenth century, 278. 
Celibacy, Moehler on, 251. 
Central America, Las Casas in, 

143. 

Centuriators, and Catholic his- 
tory, 158. 

Centuries of Magdeburg, 157, 
158; historical value of, 
180. 

Ceolwulf, k. of Northumbria, 
85. 

Cervantes, 65. 

Charity, Muratori 
236. 

Charlemagne, 54. 

Charles VI, Emperor, 237. 

Chartularium (Denifle), 360. 

Chevalier, U., 399. 

Chiapa, Bishop of (Las Casas), 
143. 

Christian Charity, Muratori on, 
235. 

Chronicle (Eusebius), 11. 

Chronicon (Isidore of Seville), 
60. 

Chronicon (Otto von Freising), 
61. 

Chronology, Bede’s service to, 
93; of Eusebius, 12; Jew- 
ish, 13. 

Church and Churches (Doel- 
linger), 208. 

Church, and civilization, 64. 

Church and State, 310. 

Church Fathers, 74. 

Church History (Bede), de- 
scription of, 78; plan of, 
84, 95. 

Church History (Socrates), 24. 

Church history, St. Philip Neri 
and, 161; philosophy of, 
172. 


and, 235, 


420 


Cicero, influence of, on Oro- 
sius, 60. 

Cisalpine Club, 279. 

City of God, 48. 

Civilization, 51, 65; 
Church, 64-66. 

Civilta Catholica, 353. 

Clement of Alexandria, 11. : 

Clement, XIV, Pope, 218. 

Clovis, 54, 87. 

Cluny, 105. 

Coelestius, and Pelagius, 43. 

Coelfrid, 73. 

College, of Bollandists, 198, 203. 

Collegium Germanicum 
(Rome), 290. 

Collis ePs%108;a214- 

Colman, Bishop of Lindisfarne, 
82. 

Colonial culture, 131. 

Colonial historians, 1309. 

Comacchio, 215. 

Commonitorum (Orosius), 38. 

Conciliengeschichte (Hefele), 
chisp 

Concilium Tridentinum, 393. 

Confession of St. Peter, Baro- 
nius on, 180. 

Confessions (St. Augustine), 52. 
Congress of Catholic Scholars 
(Munich, 1863), 305. 
Conquestus (Ordericus Vitalis), 

TIO.sr 20: 

Conradino, 230. 

Constantine, panegyric on, 7; 
speeches of, 20; baptism of, 
207. 

Contarini, Cardinal, 378, 392. 

Conversion, of Anglo-Saxons, 
971; of Franks, 71. 

Conversions, Oxford Movement, 
286. 

Conybeare, F. C., 27. 

Cottolengo, Blessed, 237. 

Council of the Indies, 143. 


and the 


INDEX 


Councils, Nicaea (325), 6; 
Second Nicaean, 25; Sara- 
gossa, 37; Rheims (1119), 
105; Vatican, 251. 

Creighton, 285; and Pastor, 
402-404. 

Criticism, historical, 196; philo- 
logical, 209. 

Crivellucci, 19. 

Croce, B., 70. 

Croyland, 104. 

Crusade, first, 118. 

Ctesias, 59. 

Cultur Flacianus, 181. 

Culture, Latin, and barbarian, 
553; colonial, 131. 

Cumana, 146. 


D’ACHERY, 197, 221. 

Dahlmann, 327. 

D’Ailly, 240. 

Dante and Orosius, 61. 

Date, of Easter, 81. 

DAVID, Charles W., Ordericus 
Vitalis, 100-127. 

De Arte Metrica (Bede), 96. 

De Broglie, Victor, 268. 

De Buck, 209. 

De Civitate Det (St. Augus- 
tine), 61. 

De Dominis, 249. 

DEFERRARI, Roy J., Euse- 


bius, 3-29. 
Delehaye, 194, 203; Legendes, 
208. 


Delisle, Léopold, and the Hist. 
Eccl. of Order. Vit., 114, 
117: 

De Lucca, B., 354. 

De Maistre, ror. 

DENIFLE (Stratemeier), 354- 


372. 

Denifle: life of, 355; writings 
of, 356; historical method, 
361-368; education, 365; 


INDEX 


characterized, 367; honours 
at Cambridge, 371. 

De orthographia (Bede), 76. 

De Ratione Temporum (Bede), 
74- 

De re diplomatica (Mabillon), 
210. 

De Roo, on Alexander VI, 389. 

De Sanctis, F., 218. 

De Smedt, Charles, S.J., 1094, 
202; Principes, 208. 

Désolation (Denifle), 365. 

Destruction of BolJlandist li- 
brary (1794), 201. 

De Tempore (Bede), 74. 

De Viris illustribus (Jerome), 
60. 

De Waal, Anton, 379. 

Diet of Worms (1521), 395. 

Diocese of Chiapa, 145, 149. 

Diocletian, 18. 

Dionysius of Halicarnassus, 11. 

Discourse on Universal History 
(Bossuet), 61. 

Documentos ineditos, 152. 

Doellinger, 271, 292, 300. 

Dominican historians, 354. 

Dominicans, 362. 

*Donatio Constantini,” 179. 

Dublin Review, 352. 

Ducange, 223. 

Duchesne, André, Historiae 
Normannorum  Scriptores, 
124. 

Duel, Muratori on the, 219. 

Du Sollier, 198. 


Earty Church, and paganism, 5. 


Easter, date of, 74; Roman, 
81. 
Ecclesiastical history, Bede’s 


contribution to, go. 
Ecclesiastical History (Euse- 

bius), 14; (Bede), 96. 
Edict of Milan, 3. 


421 


Education, Muratori on, 215. 

Edwin, k. of Northumbria, 80. 

Egbert, letter to (Bede), 77. 

Ehrile, Cardinal, 316, 371, 378. 

Ehses, Msgr., 393. 

Einheit der Kirche (Moehler), 
242, 260. 

End of Controversy (Milner), 
264. 

English Catholics, scholarship 
of, 279. 

“ Enlightenment,” the, 290, 294, 
324. 

Entstehung der Universiteten 
(Denifle), 357. 

Erasmus, 190. 

Este family, 215. 

Eulogius, Bishop of Caesarea, 


46. 

EUSEBIUS (Deferrari), 3-29. 

Eusebius, and pagan sacrifices, 
5; Apology, 5; and Arians, 
6; and Constantine, 7; 
works of, 7-10; death of, 
7; Style, 10; Praeparatio, 
II; Chronicle, I1; histor- 
ical works, 11-21; chrono- 
logical studies, 12; histori- 
cal method of, 16; Martyrs, 
17; Church History, 17; 
panegyric on Constantine, 
19; scholarship, 21; as his- 
torian, 21-24; as apologist, 
23; reputation, 24-26; and 
St. Jerome, 25. 

Eusebius of Samosata, 7. 

Eustathius, Bishop of Antioch, 
6. 

Exportation, of negroes, 142. 


FatsE Decretals, 250, 207, 262. 
Fathers, of the Church, 74. 
Faulhaber, M., 26. 

Febronius, 249. 

Feder, Lehrbuch, 211. 


422 


FELLNER, Felix, O.S.B., Pas- 
tor, 373, 415. 

Foederati, 37. 

Ficker, Julius, 327. 

FISCHER, Herman C., Her- 
genroether, 289-320. 

Flacius Illyricus, 158. 

Fleury, Claude, 223. 

Florence of Worcester, 105. 

Florez-Risco, 67. 

Florus, 60. 

Foscolo, U., 227. 

Francis I, 395. 

Franciscans, Irish, 222. 

Franks, history of, 60; conver- 
sion of, 71. 

Franzelin, Cardinal, 379. 

French, in America, 137. 

French recognition of United 
States (1778), 132. 

Freytag, L., 347. 

Fueter, Histortographie, v, 1713 
prejudices against Catholic 
historians, 172, 180, 188, 
IQI, 192, 204, 352. 

Fulcher of Chartres, 118. 


GACHARD, 326. 

Gallician views of Moehler, 262. 

GAMBLE, Wm. M.T., Orosius, 
30-70. 

GamsjiP:5B., O.S:B40248: 

Ganganelli (Clement XIV), 218. 

Garnett, B., 400. 

Gelasianum, 233. 

Gelasius I, Pope, 60. 

General Councils, Moehler on, 
247. 

Gennadius, 60. 

Geographical 
Orosius, 59. 

George I (England), 217. 

Gerson, 249. 

Gesta Dei per Francos (Gui- 
bert), 61. 


knowledge, of 


INDEX 


Gesta Normannorum Ducum, 
(William of Jumieges), 
113, 124. 

Giannone, Pietro, 210. 

Giles, J. A., 98. 

Gillow, 289. 

Gnostizismus (Moehler), 259. 

Gold rush (1502), 141. 

Gooch, v, 276. 

Gorres Society, 384. 

Goths, 55; Arianism of, 56. 

Goyau, 276. 

Grabmann, M., 372. 

Grauert, H., 372. 

Greek Schism, 310. 

Gregorovius, on Janssen, 342. 

Gregory of Tours, History, 60. 

Gregory XIII, 78, 167. 

Gregory XVI, 201. 

Guibert of Nogent, Gesta, 61. 

Guicciardini, 190, 222. 

Guilday, Introduction, 211, 289. 

Guizot, F.P.G., 125. 

Gwatkin, H. M., 26. 


HapRIAN, emperor, 36. 

Hakluyt, as historiographer, 150. 

Hardy, Descriptive Catalogue, 
125. 

Harnack, 27; and Denifle, 370. 

Haskins, C. H., 113, 123, 125. 

Hefele, History of the Councils, 
316. 

Hegel, concept of history, 274. 

Heikel, I. A., 19. 

Hellenism, 23. » 

Henry I (England), 122. 

Henry the Navigator, 148. 

Henschen, 196, 199. 

Heresy: Priscillian, 41; Pela- 
gian, 45. 

HERGENROETHER 
(Fischer), 289-320. 

Hergenroether: brothers of, 289; 
life of, 290; education, 294; 


INDEX 


characterized, 297; and pa- 
pal history, 299; and tem- 
poral power, 305; and 
Doellinger, 308; Church 
and State, 310; Manual, 
312; Cardinal, 314; Vatican 
Librarian, 314. 
Hergenroether, Theresa, 303. 
Herodotus, 60, 62. 
Herrera, 150. 
Hertling, George von, 377. 
Hettinger, 291, 2096. 
Hippolytus (Hergenroether), 
300. 
Historia de las Indias 
Casas), 145. 
Historia Eccles. 
(Bede), 77. 
Historia Ecclesiastica (Order- 
icus), 100, 108, 113; sources 
of, 115; plan of, 117. 
Historiae Normannorum Scrip- 
tores (Duchesne), 124. 
Historian, and love oi truth, 


(Las 


Gentis Angl. 


284. 

Historian, difficulties of the, 
139. 

Historians, of — Benedictine 
School, 192; of Jesuit 


School, 192. 

Historical criticism, 196. 

Historical interpretation, patris- 
tic, 643 

Historical method: Baronius, 
178; Bede, 86; Bollandisto, 
195, 199, 204; Denifle, 361, 
368; Eusebius, 16; Janssen, 
336; Lingard, 284; Mura- 
tori, 223; Mboehler, 264, 
271; Ordericus Vitalis, 117, 
120; Pastor, 391, 408. 

Historical science, Bede’s serv- 
ice to, 93. 

Historical studies, modern trend 
of, 190; Leo XIII on, 315. 


423 

Historical writing, in America, 
1315, 136; 

Histories (Orosius): political 


outlook of, 53; on cultural 

discipline, 57. 
Historiographia Ecclesiastica, iv. 
Historiography: Orosian, 33; 

Patristic, 51; recent studies 


in, 62; American; 130; 
Catholic, 192; and Bol- 
landisto, 206; difficulties of, 
284. 


Historische-Politische 
292, 353, 385. 

Historisches Jahrbuch, 384, 398. 

History, and progress, 64. 

History, genetic presentation of, 
ours 

History of England (Lingard), 
2447, 

History of the Abbots (Bede), 
88. 

History of the Franks (Gregory 
of Tours), 95. 

History of the German People 
(Janssen), 331. 

History of the Goths (Cassi- 
odorus), 95. 

History of the Lombards (Paul 
the Deacon), 96. 

History of the Popes (Pastor), 
381, 393, 397. 

History, patristic philosophy of, 
64. 

History, providential interpre- 
tation of, 33. 

History, universal view of, 58. 

Hochland, 385. 

Holy Office, and Catholic writ- 
€rs;92 16: 

Honorius, Emperor, 54. 

House of Este, and Muratori, 
278. 

Humanism, 190. 

Hundred Years’ War, 368. 


Blaetter, 


424 


Huns, 55. 
Hurter (Nomenclator) ,188, 211. 


ICONOCLAST controversy, 25. 

Imagination, historical, 138. 

Immaculate Conception, doc- 
trine of, 217. 

Indian Slavery, 145. 

Infallibility of Pope, 307. 

Inquisition, archives of, 405. 

Institutions, history of, 62. 

Invasions, barbarian, 56. 

Iona, 80, 84. 

Trish Franciscans 
232: 

Isabella, Queen (Spain), 141. 

Isidore of Seville, Chronicon, 
60. 

Italy, Normans in, 116. 


(Louvain), 


JANNINCK, 106. 

Jansenists, 256. 

JANSSEN (Kaufmann), 321- 
353. 

Janssen, 321; life of, 322; 
education, 323; German 
People, 331, 386; charac- 
terized, 332; _ historical 
method, 336; and Pastor, 
349, 398; Life, 386. 

Janus (Doellinger), 299. 

Jarrow, monastery, 72. 

Jesuit historians, 192. 

Joachim of Fiori, Abbot, 357. 

John, Bishop of Jerusalem, 42. 

John of Worcester, 105. 

Joseph I, Emperor, 216. 

Josephism, 324. 

Josephus, 11. 

Journalism, Muratori and, 219. 

Julian the Apostate, 216. 

Julius I, Pope, 216. 

Jungmann, iv. 


Katholik, 393. 


INDEX 


KAUFMANN, Alfred, 
Janssen, 321-353. 

Kaulen, Franz, 313. 

Kerr, Lady Amabel, 162. 

Ketteler, Emmanuel von, 377. 

Kirchengeschichte (Moehler- 
Gams), 245, 270. 

Kirchenlexicon, 313, 319, 385. 

Kirsch, 3109. 

Klee, 291. 

Klopp, Onno, 377. 

K. of C. Historical Commis- 
sion, 146. 

Koelnische Volkszeitung, 377. 

Kraus, F. X., 392. 

Kulturkampf, 310, 317, 321. 


S.J 


LACORDAIRE, 321. 

Lactantius, 20. 

Laderchi, 188. 

Laemmer, H., 188. 

Lanfranc, 106. 

LAS CASAS (Tschan), 
S72 

Las Casas: Winsor’s estimate 
of 128; characterized, 131, 
148; as_ historiographer, 
138, 140; travels, 142; un- 
popularity, 143; Bishop, 
143; death, 144; writings, 
144; Brev. Rel., 145; Se- 
pulveda, 145; Apol. Hist., 
145; reforms of, 147. 

Lastingaeu, 85. 


128- 


Latin America, revolutions, 
134. 

Lazarus, Bishop of Aix-les- 
Bains, 44. 


Lebensbild (Pastor), 386. 

Lechat, Robert, S.J., 203, 211. 

Legendes Hagiographiques (De- 
lehaye), 208. 

Leibniz, 204. 

Leo XI, 165. 


Leo XIII, 76; and Denifle, 


INDEX 


356; and Hergenroether, 
314; and Janssen, 343; and 
Vatican Archives, 380; let- 
ter on historical studies 
(Aug. 18, 1883), 315. 

Letters of Muratori (Cam- 
pori), 233. 

Libraries, of Caesarea and De- 
lia, 24. 

Library: Bollandist, 197; Mo- 

dena, 222; Roman, 162. 

of Constantine (Euse- 

bius), 7, Io. 

Lightfoot, J. B., 27. 

Lindisfarne, 72, 81. 

LINGARD (Ryan), 277-288. 

Lingard, 277, 278; History of 
England, 279; and Milner, 


Life 


282; characterized, 283; 
historical method, 284, 
286. 

Lipsius, Justus, 212. 

Livy, 60. 

Lombards, 56. 

Louvain, Janssen at, 325. 

Louvain, University, iv. 

Lucan, 36. 

Luther and Lutherdom (De- 
nifle), 368. 

Luther, Moehler on, 266. 

Lydda, Synod, 46. 

MABILLON, 197, 210; Diplo- 


matica, 210. 
Macchiavelli, Nicolo, 138. 
Maffei, Scipione, 210. 
Magdeburg Centuries, 158, 160, 
IF7S70L: 
Magic, Muratori on, 210. 
Mai, Angelo, 314. 
Mainer, Abbot, 103. 
Manichaeans, Eusebius on, 9. 
Manichaeism, 38. 
MANNHARDT, Francis, S.J., 
Bollandus, 190-211. 


Manning, Cardinal, 351. 
Mansi, 189, 192. 

Manual of Church History 
(Hergenroether), 312. 
Manuscripts, medieval copying 

of, 106. 
Manzoni, Aless, 227. 
Marcellus of Ancyra, 7. 
Marheineke, 268. 
Marianus Scotus, 104. 
Martial, 36. 
Martyrologium Hieronymianum, 


Martyrologium Romanum, 7, 
167. 

Martyrology (Bede), 78. 

Martyrology, revised by Ba- 
ronius, 164. 

Martyrs of Palestine (Euse- 
bius), 17. 

Maurists, 124, 192. 

Maximinus, persecution (303- 
310), 5. 

Mazarin Library, 36. 

Medicine, at Saint-Evroul, 106. 

Medieval universities, 357. 

Mediterranean civilization, 51. 

Melanchthon, 395. 

Mexico, Las Casas in, 143. 

Michael, Emil, S.J., 384. 

Middle Ages, historical spirit of, 
190, 207. 

Migne, Latin Patrology, 73, 
197. 

Milan, 3, 213, 230. 

MILLER, Leo. F., Moehler, 
240-276. 

Milner, 264, 278, and Lingard, 
282. 

Minorca, 47. 

Miracles, St. Bede on, 86. 

Mirbt, C., 187. 

Modena, 212, 222. 

MOEHLER (Miller), 240-276. 

Moehler, life, 241; Athanasius, 


426 


2425 education, 24 3's 
Symbolik, 243; theological 


views, 244-257; historical 
method, 258, 264, 266, 
Ay he 


Moeller, Jean, 326. 
Mohammedanism, 269. 
Mommeen, on St. Bede, 97. 
Montalembert, 321. 
Monumenta Germaniae 
torica, 339, 389. 

Mooney, J. A., 410. 

Moran, Card., 396. 

Munich, Catholic 
(1863), 305. 

Munich, University of, 293. 

MURATORI (Shahan), 212- 
230. 

Muratori, 192, 197, 212; Anec- 
dota, 213, 216; education, 
213; and House of Este, 
215; on education, 215; 
biographies by, 215; phil- 
osophical writings, 218; 
on duels, capital punish- 
ment, magic, etc., 219; his- 
torical method, 220, 223, 
letters of, 233. 

Muratorian Canon, 214. 

Musical art, at Saint Evroul, 
IIl. 


His- 


Congress 


Napoteon III, 300. 

Natalis Alexander, 223. 

Neander, and Moehler, 242. 

Negroes, exportation of, 142. 

Negro slavery, 48, 143. 

Neo-Bollandists, 201. 

“ New Laws” of 1542 (Indies), 
143. 

Nicaea, Council (325), 6. 

Nicaea, Second Council of, 25. 

Norman Conquest, 114. 

Normans, in Italy, 116. 

Nothelm, and Bede, 85. 


INDEX 


OcrEAN tides, Bede on, 76. 

O’Clery, Michael, 222. 

Odelerius of Orleans, tor. 

Oratory of San Girolamo, 155. 

ORDERICUS VITALIS 
(David), 100-127. 

Ordericus Vitalis: critical esti- 
mate of, 100; life of, 100; 
works of, 100-110; educa- 
tion, 102; poems, IIO; as 
historian, 113; plan of 
History, 116; historical 
method, IL7, 420;"12%. 

Origen, 4, 38; cosmic philoso- 
phy of, 41; Orosius on, 
Al. 

Origenism, 32. 

Origenists, 38, 41. 

Orlando Furioso, 66. - 

“ Ormesta”, 61. 

OROSIUS (Gamble), 30-70. 

Orosius: life of, 30-33; in- 
fluence on historiography, 
33; Histories, 34, 39; his- 
torical method, 40, 58; 
works of, 48; geographi- 
cal knowledge, 59; philoso- 
phy of history, 62-64. 

Orsi, Cardinal, 354. 

Orthodox Journal, 283. 

Oswy, 82. 

Otto von Freising, 61, 121. 

Ovando, 141. 

Ozanam, 321. 


PAGANISM, and early Church, 5. 

Pagi, Anthony, 80. 

Pagi, Francis, 89. 

Pallavicini, 2109. 

Pamphilus, 4, §. 

Papacy and the Papal States 
(Doellinger), 298. 

Papal infallibility, 246. 

Papebroch, 193, 199; and Car- 
melites, 207. 


INDEX 


“Papist”, used by Baronius, 
167. 

Paraguay, Jesuit missions of, 
232) 


Pasquali, G., 109. 

Passaglia, 292. 

PASTOR (Fellner), 373-415. 
Pastor, Ludwig von, 340, 
373; life of, 374; and 
Janssen, 374; at Louvain, 
375; education’ .of, 375; 
characterized, 383; enno- 
bled, 383; works of, 386; 
estimate of Alexander VI, 
389; historical method of, 
391; as historian, 400. 

Patristic: hagiography, 62; 
historiography, 51; philos- 
ophy of history, 62. 

Patrologia Latina (Migne), 73. 


Patrologie (Moehler-Reith- 
mayr), 246. 
Paul the Deacon, Lombards, 


95. 

Paulsen, F., 347. 

Paul Warnefried (the Deacon), 
95. 

Peasants’ War (1525), 340. 
Pelagius, 32, 42; education of, 
44; doctrines, 44-46. 

Penda, 8o. 

Pepin of Heristal, 54. 

Perrone, 292. 

Persecution, under Maximinus 
(303-310), 5 

Petau, 209. 

Peterson, John B., 187. 

Petrach, 215. 

Pfligk-Harttung, 309. 

Philology, Alexandrian, 24. 

Philosophy of history, patristic, 
64; Catholic, 172. 

Photius, 25. 

Photius (Mee ether} 30I- 


304. 


427 


Pitra, Cardinal, 380. 

Pius V, Pope, 412. 

Pius IX, Pope, 291, 300; and 
Hergenroether, 314; 379. 

Pius XI, on Baronius, 167, 170, 


229, 383. 
Planels,), Gir}, 2603 
PLASSMANN, Thomas, 
O.F.M., Baronius, 153-189. 
Pliny, 74. 


Plummer, C., 98. 

Plutarch, and Orosius, 60. 

Polybius, 60. 

Poole, R., 99. 

Porphyry, 9, 14. 

Portuguese discoverers, 137. 

Potthast, 188. 

Praeparatio Evangelica (Euse- 
bius), II. 

Primacy of Holy See, 247. 

Principes de la Critique his- 
torique (De Smedt), 208. 

Principle, of popular  sover- 
eignty, 132. 

Priscillian, execution of, 36, 37. 

Priscillianism, 32, 35, 37, 4I, 
64. 

Probabilism, 257. 

Progress, and history, 64. 

Protestant Revolt, and history, 
158. 

Purgatory, Baronius on, 186. 


QUINTILLIAN, 36. 
“Quis mihi Augustinus?”, 46. 


RankE, Leopold von, 374, 377, 
394; and Pastor, 407. 

Ratti (Pope Pius XI), on Ba- 
ronius, 167, 170. 

Raynaldus, 188. 

Recueil des MHistoriens etc. 
(Maurists), 124. 

Regesta Leonis X (Hergen- 
roether), 316. 


428 


Reginald the Bald, 112. 

Reichensperger, A., 333, 351; 
377- 

Reina, 
238. 

Reisach, Cardinal, 351. 

Relics, of St. Stephen, 47. 

Renaissance, 350. 

Renan, 211. 

Rerum Ital. Script. (Muratori), 


Classici Italiani, 227, 


205) 

Restoration of Jesuits (1814), 
201. 

Reuchlin, 340. 

Reunionsbestrebungen (Pas- 
tor), 378, 395. 

Revolutions, Latin American, 
134. 

Revue d’Histoire Ecclésiastique, 
196. 

Rheims, Council (1119), 105. 

Richer, 2409. 


Robert Guiscard, 121. 

Robert of Torigny, 124. 

Roger du Sap, 104, 112. 

Roger of Montgomery, Iot. 

Roland, 66. 

Rollo, 54. 

Roman Congregation of Rites, 
86. 

Roman reckoning of Easter, 81. 

Rome, libraries of, 162. 

Rosweyde, 1093. 

Rufinus, 17, 44. 

RYAN, Edwin, Lingard, 277- 
288. 


SACRAMENTARIES, 233. 

Saepenumero considerantes 
(August 13, 1883), open- 
ing of Vatican Archives, 
380. 

St. Aidan, 72, 80. 

St. Anselm of Canterbury, 
106; Moehler on, 262. 


INDEX 


St. Antoninus of Florence, 354. 

St. Augustine (England), 71, 
79- 

St. Augustine: and Orosius, 33- 
38; on man’s destiny, 41- 
42; theory of history of, 
52; Confessions, 52; City 
of God, 61. 

St. Basil the Great, 7. 

ST. BEDE THE VENER- 
ABLE (Betten), 71-709. 

St. Bede: birth, 71; biblical 
studies, 74-75; on ocean 
tides, 76; letter to Egbert, 
wie martyrology, 78; 
Church History, 84; on 
miracles, 86; historical 
method of, 86; Abbots, 
88; as stylist, 94; Momm- 
sen on, 97. 

St. Benedict Biscop, 72, 89. 

St. Ceolfrid, 72, 89. 

St. Cuthbert, 72. 

St. Egbert, Bishop of York, 91. 

Saint-Evroul, 103, 105, 106, 
114. 

St. Firmus of Caesarea, 216. 

St. Gregory of Tours, 71, 95, 


96. 

St. Gregory I, the Great, Pope, 
71, 79. 

St. Gregory Nazianzen, 216, 
203. 


St. Hadrian, 85. 

St. Ignatius Loyola, 216. 

St. Isidore of Seville, 74, 75. 

St. Jerome, 18; and Eusebius, 
25; and barbarians, 32; 
and Orosius, 33-36; De 
Vir. ilust., 60. 

Saint-Maur, Benedictines of, 
124. 

St. Oswald, k. of Northumbria, 
80. 

St. Paul, and Seneca, 179. 


INDEX 


St. Paulinus, Bishop of York, 
80. 

St. Paulinus of Nola, 213. 

St. Philip Neri, and Baronius, 
ThE 

St. Remigius, 71. 

St. Stephen, relics of, 47. 

St. Theodore (Canterbury), 
83. 

St. Vitalian, Pope, 83. 

St. Wilfred, 83. 

Saints, veneration of, 205. 

Salamanca, Las Casas at, 141. 

San Domingo, 143. 

Saragossa, Council (380), 37. 

Savonarola, Pastor on, 389. 

Scaliger, 13. 

Schiller as Historian (Janssen), 
331. 

Scholastic theology, attack on 
(Doellinger), 305. 

Schools, Alexandria, 45; 
Whitby, 82, York, 92; Bec, 
106; Saint-Evroul, 106; 
Tuebingen, 243, 297. 

Schwab, J. B., 2094. 

Scienza Nuova (Vico), 234. 

Scriptores (Muratori), value of 
33%, 

Scriptores Rerum Prussicarum, 


394. 
Segneri, 216. 


Seneca and St. Paul, corre- 
spondence of, 179. 

Sepulveda, controversy (Las 
Casas), 145. 

Seven Books of Histories 
(Orosius), 34, 48-49; plan 
of, 58. 

SHAHAN, Bishop, Muratori?, 
212-230. 


Shakespeare, 65. 
Shotwell, J. T., 60. 
Shrewsbury, tot. 

“Siécle de Voltaire”, 218. 


429 


Sigebert of Gemblours, 105, 
124. 

Sigonio, 212, 222. 

Sirleto, Cardinal, 78, 169, 175. 

Slavery, negro, 143; Indian, 
145. 

Society of Jesus, suppression, 
196; restoration, 201. 
Socrates, Church history, 24. 
Sovereignty, principle of, 132. 

Sozomenus, 15. 
Speeches of Constantine, 20. 


Spicilegium Ossoriense (Mo- 
ran), 396. 
Spiritual Exercises (St. Ig- 


natius Loyola), 216. 

Spondé, 189. 

Stang, Historiographia Ecclesi- 
astica, iv. 

Stilicho, 53. 

Stimmung der Zeit, 352. 

Stolberg, Count Leopold von, 
339. 

STRATEMEIER, Boniface, 
O.P., Denifle, 354-372. 

Stylite Saints, 207. 

Summa, of St. Thomas Aqui- 
nas, 355. 

Supression of Jesuits (1773), 
196. 

Syllabus (1864), 306. 

Symbolik (Moehler), 243, 265. 

Symbolism, sources of, 266. 

Synods: Lydda, 46; Whitby, 83. 


TACITUS, 60, 190. 

Tatian, II. 

Temporal Power of Papacy, 
298. 

Tetzel and Luther (Denifle), 


355- 

The Month, 352. 

The Papal States (Hergenroe- 
ther), 298. 

Theiner, A., 189. 


430 

Theodosius the Great, 32, 36, 
37- 

Theologische Quartalschrift, 
374- 


PH PLAS 359; 

Thirty Years’ War, 344. 

Thompson, Reference Studies, 
138. . 

Thucydides, 190. 

Tillemont, 192, 223. 

Tiraboschi, 169, 234. 

To my Critics (Janssen), 342. 

Trajan, 36. 

Tricennalia, 21. 

Truth, historical, 318. 
TSCHAN, Francis J., 
Casas, 128-152. 
Tuebingen, School of, 242, 243, 

207. 
Turner). C; H.5. 20. 


Las 


Unigenitus, 256. 

United States, 
(1778), 132. 

Universities, Denifle on origin 
of, 358. 

University of Paris, and Mendi- 
cants, 362. 

University of Paris, 
on, 360. 


France and 


Denifle 


VALLA, 1090. 

Valois, Henri, 223. 

Vandals, 32, 35. 

Van Ortroy, 209. 

Vatican Archives, and Hergen- 
roether, 317; opening of, 
380. 

Vatican Council, 251, 306. 

Velasquez, Gov., 141. 

Veuillot, Louis, 311. 

Vico, J. B., 234. 

Victor Emmanuel II, 300. 


INDEX 


Vienna, Congress (1815), 321. 

Vincent of Beauvais, 354. 

Virgil, influence of, on Orosius, 
60. 

Visigoth Arians, 37. 

Vitae Patrum  (Rosweyde), 
193. 

Voelkerwanderung, 56. 

Von Schulte, 307. 


Wappinc, Luke, 222, 

Waitz, George, 377. 

Wattenbach, 60. 

Wearmouth, monastery, 72. 

Wearmouth-Jarrow, 88. 

Weiss, A., O.P., 371. 

Werner, K., 08. 

Whitby, School of, 82; Con- 
ference of (664), 83. 

Wictred, k. of Kent, 72. 

William of Jumiéges, 113. 

William of Malmesburgy 121. 

William the Conqueror, 54, 
121. 

Windthorst, 351. 

Winsor, Justin, 128. 

Witmund, 112. 

World-history, Orosius’ concept 
of, 33. 

Writing, historical, in America, 
13Ty1 136. 

Wuerzburg, University of, 290, 
206. 


XANTEN, 322. 
York, school of, 92. 


ZANGMEISTER, 67. 

Zanichelli, Nicola, 228. 

Zeitschrift fuer Katholischen 
Theologie, 353. 

Zigliara, Cardinal, 355. 





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